Yukon rear axle removal help

[amaturejoe]

Rear is going on my 2001 yukon XL 3/4 ton, so I am going to swap it out for used one with lower miles.
Instead of disconecting all the break lines I pulled all the brakes and everything and hung them. My plan is to pull the axels out, disconect the four bolts that connect the axel to the brake support and drop the rear. Install the new used rear, pull one axel at a time, install brake support and reinstall brakes.

However I ran into a probme with removing the axels.
I removed the pinion shaft lock bolt and moved the pinion shaft and pushed the axel in to romove the c-clip.
However, I can not get the c-clip out. What I would assume is the front of the opening is coverd buy two rollers with springs (see picture) and I can't get the c-clip out of the back (see pictures).

Are the rollers wtih springs part of the posi track system?
Does anyone know if I have to remove them to get the axel out?
If so, how do I remove and reinstall them and are any special tools required?
If not how do I get the c-clip out of the other side?

Thanks for the help

Joe

 

[amaturejoe]

Got the axles out after some research and playing with it a little.
Did find out the rollers and springs on the one side is part of the mechanical posi trac.
Couldn't find anything on line different about axel removal with the posi trac, so I wnet back to the standard instructions.
Basically it was jsut removing the c-clips from the other side after pushing the axels in (can see part of clip in picture with thumb in it). Just had to get the c-clips aligned to come off and use a very small pair of needle nose to pull them off.
Going to have to wait until the weekend to finish the axel swap, hopefully everything will go as planned.

As note the Yukon has 224k miles on it. No other major problems, just an ac compressor and belt tension pulley. Based on the noise coming from the rear I was told it is the pinion bearings. Talked to several people and based on threir experience it was better to change out the rear then go through the work of changing the pinion bearings and still having an old rear.