I Bought Three of These the Same Week
I Bought Three of These the Same Week
A CV axle that a screwdriver and a claw hammer could not move, and the 74-year-old front-end man who fixed it with two words.
Saturday, two hours in, straightening the screwdriver I had just bent. The axle had not moved.
Every fall I do what my family calls the list. Before the county starts laying salt, every car that belongs to one of my kids comes out to the barn and goes up on the lift. Brakes, boots, tie rods, whatever is clicking. I have done it for eleven years, since I retired, and I have never once sent one of those cars to a shop.
This year the list started with my daughter's 2011 Accord, clicking on every left turn out of her driveway. A torn outer boot and a worn joint. A new axle was eighty-nine dollars at the parts store. The shop in town had quoted her six hundred and ten.
I figured an hour. It took me two Saturdays and a stop at a tire shop, and I came home with a hammer I had never seen before. The next week I went back and bought two more. Here is why.
Thirty-one years on school buses. I am not new to a stuck axle.
My name is Rudy. I am sixty-six. I spent thirty-one years keeping the school buses running for a district in Tazewell County, which means I have pulled more axles than most men have changed oil. Buses, pickups, the superintendent's Impala. When I retired, Joanne let me put a two-post lift in the pole barn behind the house, and that lift has paid for itself many times over in shop bills my kids never had to pay.
I mention that so you understand this was not a man who had never seen a CV axle. The outer end came out of the hub the way it should. The inner end, the part that plugs into the transmission, would not come out.
On an Accord, and on a lot of the front-wheel-drive cars on the road, the inner joint is held in the transmission by a spring clip. You pry it out with a sharp pop, and the manual says to do it with a bar between the joint housing and the case. On this car there is about an inch and a half between the joint and the subframe. A big bar would not fit. A small bar would not get the angle. Anything I put in there was pushing sideways instead of out.
Every tool in the barn. Here is what each one did.
- Big pry bar. Would not fit between the subframe and the joint without dropping the subframe, and nobody drops a subframe for an eighty-nine dollar axle.
- Long flat screwdriver. Found the gap, bent in the middle on the second pull, and left a dent in my palm I had for a week.
- Small pry bar. Fit, but the only angle I had pushed the joint sideways into the case, not out of it.
- My old claw hammer. The claw points straight back from the head, so with the handle where my arm could reach, the claw was aimed at the subframe. It put three bright gouges in the joint housing and did nothing else.
- A drift and the three pound hammer. Joanne asked me to stop before I cracked the transmission case, and she was right.
Six hundred and ten dollars for a job I have done a hundred times
My daughter had the shop quote on her fridge. Eighty-nine for the part if she bought it herself. The shop's number was six hundred and ten, with the part at their price and the labor at book time. I do not blame the shop. They have a lift, an air hammer, a slide hammer with the right adapter, and a man who does four of these a week. That is what you pay for.
But I have a lift, and I had the part. What I did not have was a way to get a pull on that joint from the one angle the car left me. And the list still had four cars on it, two of them with boots I did not like the look of.
You cannot leave a torn boot through an Illinois winter. The salt gets in, the grease washes out, and the joint that clicks in October is the one that gives up on the interstate in January. I have towed enough school buses off the shoulder in February to know how that goes.
That is the gap. The bright marks on the joint housing are from my claw hammer. The screwdriver did not make it through the afternoon.
The front-end man on the bench at the tire shop
Sunday morning I stopped at the tire shop on Court Street, where I have bought tires for thirty years, mostly to get a coffee and complain. Ardell was on the bench out front.
Ardell is seventy-four. He ran the front-end and alignment side of that shop for thirty-eight years before his son took it over, and he still comes in most mornings to sit on the bench and tell the young guys what they are doing wrong. I told him about the Accord. He did not laugh. He asked me which side, and then he said two words.
"Pull square."
Then he walked out to his pickup and came back with a hammer I had never seen. Black steel handle, orange grip, a regular looking head, and a round pin where the claw meets the neck. He pressed a button on the side of the head with his thumb, swung the claw down, and it clicked and locked at ninety degrees to the handle, like the letter L.
"Everybody fights those inner joints with the claw pointing the wrong way," he said. "You set the hook down behind the lip of the housing, you rest the head on the case, and you pull the handle toward you where your arm has room. Square to the joint. The clip lets go, and you never touch the boot. I have had this one in the truck for a year. It does the axles, it lines up the holes on a control arm when the new bushing fights you, and it walks an engine mount bracket over that last quarter inch. I quit carrying the pry bars."
He told me one more thing, and I respect him for it. "It is still a hammer. It is not a press. If a ball joint is pressed in, you press it out. This is for the jobs where the only thing wrong is the angle."
Ardell at the shop, finger on the pin the claw turns on. He has been telling young mechanics to pull square for fifty years.
"It changes the angle, not the force."
A 16 oz forged steel head on a steel handle, with a claw that turns on a pin and locks in four positions: straight like any hammer, hooked down at ninety degrees, tucked forward flat, or folded in. A magnet in the face holds a nail so you can start it with one hand. It does not add strength to your arm. It puts the pull where the car left room for it.
Claw locks in 4 positions
Press the button, swing the claw, and it clicks in. Straight for nails, hooked for pulling at ninety degrees, tucked for prying flush, folded for the belt.
Pulls square in a tight gap
The hook catches behind the lip of a joint housing or a bracket, the head rests on something solid, and the handle comes out where your hand fits.
Still a real hammer
16 oz forged carbon steel head, steel handle, shock-absorbing grip. About two pounds in the hand, heavier than a fiberglass hammer, and you will feel why.
Honest about it
There is a hair of play where the claw turns on the pin, and it does not affect a pull. It is not a press, not a puller, and not a cure for a seized or rusted-solid part.
Where it comes from
You will not find it on the rack at the parts store, and the kid at the counter did not know what I was describing. Ardell said he ordered his from the maker's own site. Ninety-nine ninety-five, free shipping to the house, and a year to send it back if it does not earn its spot in the box. Against six hundred and ten dollars and a list with four more cars on it, I ordered one from the tire shop parking lot with his coffee still on the bench.
What happened next
Other men who quit fighting the angle
"I do a lot of CV axles on older Hondas and Toyotas. Bought one, then bought one for each bay. The young guy I have quit reaching for the air hammer on inner joints, and I quit replacing boots he tore with a pry bar."
"Lower control arm bolt would not line up after new bushings. I had been fighting it with a pry bar and my grandson holding the flashlight for an hour. Claw tucked, one lean on the handle, and the bolt slid in."
"Bought two, one for my husband and one for my son-in-law, after my husband watched the video about it three times. He took his out to the garage the day it came and has not brought it back in."
The Wednesday it came. Claw set, head against the case, one pull toward me. Joanne took this one too. She says I looked like a different man than the one in the first picture.
If you do your own front end, check this before the salt
Get under the car this week with a flashlight and look at the CV boots, inside and out. If a boot is torn or throwing grease, that axle is coming out before spring whether you plan for it or not, and it is a lot easier in a dry barn in September than on the shoulder in January.
Then look at the gap between the inner joint and the subframe on your own car and ask yourself what you would pull it with. If the honest answer is a screwdriver and some hope, you already know what I would tell you. Pull square.
One for the barn
One for the barn, one for the truck
The barn, the truck, and one for each of the kids
Pole Barn Field Notes is a reader-supported publication. This is a first-person account from a home mechanic and reflects his personal experience with his own family's vehicles; CV axle retention, clearances and service procedures vary by make, model and year. The Savary Adjustable Claw Hammer is a hand tool with a claw that locks in four positions to give leverage from a different angle in tight spaces. It is not represented as a press, a puller or a remedy for parts that are rusted solid, seized or pressed in, nor as a substitute for the manufacturer's service manual or a qualified technician. Always support a vehicle on proper stands or a lift, and pry only on the joint housing, never on the boot or the shaft. Shop quotes and prices mentioned are the narrator's own experience in Illinois in 2026, not a national average. This publication is not affiliated with Honda, General Motors or any vehicle manufacturer, parts retailer or repair shop.
