I spent a lot of time today trying to get the cv axle out of the wheel hub. On the driver side it slipped right out, on the passenger side it has yet to behave.

Most of the stuff I have read and videos I have watched are different from what I am experiencing. Others remove the cover/front of the manual hub, remove that bolt with large washer and remove the snap ring.
Well, I can't see the snap ring, and the driver side slipped out without any snap issues, no snap ring accessible. After the axle came out on that side I could see the snap ring behind the gear that was in the way. Here is a picture of what is on the passenger side that I still haven't been able to remove.



I can not remove that gear so I can remove the spacer/washer behind it and finally the snap ring that I believe is behind that. What am I missing? There is a little play, the gear and the axle go in and out about 1/32". Oh, and same situation with the whole hub housing. It isn't coming out and seems to be restricted by the same gear.



From this picture what I can tell is that my hub housing should definitely come out. Should I just put enough force prying it until it comes out?

I thought all of these are the same. The one 4crawler is working on here seems to have the snap ring as the first thing from the outside. Definitely not like mine.




So, yah. Help

 

Looking at this nicely laid out hub assembly, I can not understand what would hold the inner hub gear in..

 

noone else have this issue?

happy for you all. boo for me though lol

 

is the hub body itself loose yet (ie, you have already removed the nut, lockwasher and cone washers (6) from the hub body)?

 

yeap. and the hub housing moves exactly the same amount as the shaft inside the housing. My best guess is that the gear you see in the pic is supposed to just come out, which will expose the spacer then the snap ring. I need to rig a tool to pry on that gear???

 

i wouldn't pry too much.

you are correct, without that outer snap ring, the hub should come off now. the center is the cv stub, and the snap ring is used to prevent the stub from pulling inwards and disengaging from the hub splines. perhaps something in the hub assembly has broken, or become slightly misaligned?

so far, i have been able to remove the locking hubs on all three of my 4runners once the bolt and snapring were removed (and of course the 6 hub nuts/locks/cones).

 

you could put a bolt in the axle end and pull the axle stub outwards a bit to see if the groove is there - maybe the remnants of the snap ring are in the groove and gouging everything?

 

I have not seen the snap ring yet, I have not removed the snap ring. I looked back at my build thread for when I installed this (it had the auto hubs before) but I didn't post any pics of it.

So, summary is.. I have not removed the snap ring yet as I have not reached the snap ring yet. I believe the snap ring is behind the gear that is still in the hub with the axle stub in it.

 

there is one, but it doesn't prevent the stub axle from sliding out [and the hub from coming off]. the only one that does that is the one at the outside, which appears to be missing. the inner ring holds the inner hub to the sliding assembly, but it should all come out together with the entire hub once the stub axle snap ring is removed. logically there is no way to remove the inner snap ring until the hub assembly is pulled as a unit, then the large inner ring gets removed, along with the spacers and the inner ring/hub etc.

to clarify, your picture above showing the hub components does NOT show the snap ring that you are missing, and which keeps the axle shaft from sliding inwards.

pic of my spare hub showing the two inner snap rings:

 

I just had this problem with my drivers side hub. My truck has the warn premium hubs. The axle is stuck in the inner hub. I would unbolt either the upper or lower ball joint, then support the spindle with something solid and hammer the axle towards the diff. I tried to pry off the hub and ended up breaking it......Don't do what I did lol. Now I need to track down some Aisin hubs.

 

Wallytoo thanks for taking the time and making that post.

Earlier today I was able to remove it and as I thought I immediately was ashamed of myself. Lol.

Two things led me to be concerned.
1. The driver side slid right out (shoul not have, the snap ring must have simply never snapped into the grove.
2. The passenger side wouldn't slide out even with some minor prying.

Item one led to me to falsely believe axle should slide right out. Then seeing the blow up diagram I saw the snap ring should be behind the inner hub gear. Ofcourse then the hub housing should come out. It didnt but.

In the end all i had to do was give it a bit more force. I used 4 points to push on with 4 flat screw drivers. It slid out, was tight. New axle, oem from toyota, went on fine though.

Then snap ring was as expected. Everything was fine