Pulling Front Axle Shafts

I have a shot u joint on front D Side wheel.  I have been planning to attack this problem soon—ordering all the necessary parts, and seals, etc.  

For note:  I have a 1980 350, and no doubt a Dana 50 IFS.  4:10 Dana’s front and back (so the rear is a 60 I think).  But I am concerned about the front.

I have two questions: each a bit different for the two shafts.  I can’t figure out whether the shafts pull out through the knuckle….or something more drastic—like removing the knuckle and maybe dropping the pumpkin.  

On the D Side:  the shaft disappears into the left axle arm assembly.  I cannot see anything where the shaft enters the pumpkin.  My question is:  I see conflicting info—does this shaft pull out (with persuasion) and does it pass through the knuckle? I also assume the needle bearing sort of floats inside the spindle on this side.  Oh it looks like to me, replacing that seal on D side pumpkin is a BEAR!  Need a special long seal driver?

On the pass side, it looks easier—ok, sort of:  I can eye the entire shaft to the pumpkin through the more open RH axle arm assembly.  There, it has 3 retaining bolts.  I think from there it can be pulled with that retainer unbolted—(again through the knuckle?).  But my real question on this side is the bearing.  I think it is shot.  There is seepage through the retainer and seal. I can move the short shaft that enters the diff there, up and down, sideways. Sloppy loose.  Is this bearing pressed on?  It looks like I would have to remove (drill slightly and STRIKE with a chisel) the bearing retainer here.  Then, press a new retainer on?

All this may be obvious, but I cannot tease some of this out of Light.  And, Hayes Chiltons says things I think contradict Light.

Any advice welcome here.

Cheers!

I'm sure you've found the factory shop manual instructions on the page at Documentation/Driveline/Axles.  And "All axles are basically alike with only minor differences between the three", meaning the D44, the D44HD, and the D50.

But it is my understanding that the was a design change after your axle and the D44 in Dad's truck were made.  And the difference is that the early ones were retained by a collar with three bolts while the later ones used a different method.  Yours probably has the three bolts.

My experience with the D44 in Dad's truck was that it took a significant effort to get that axle out even after the three bolts were removed.  And the way I did is is shown below:

Here are a couple of pics.  

The first pic is of the pass side front axle.  Retaining bolts are clear there, and I have a view of the entire shaft.

D side, not so easy.  But after I cleared away all the decades of caked in mud, I could look through the hole—absolutely NO retaining bolts.  I assume this one can be pulled, somehow.

Driver side just pulls straight out. On my D44 I could not remove the passenger side shaft. I ended up cutting it off (slip yoke didn't work anyway) and removing it from the diff on the bench.

The driver side should just slide out through the knuckle (after the spindle is removed).  I've done quite a few of these and never had any trouble.  The only caveat would be if there are grease fittings in the U-joint caps.  They won't fit through the knuckle, but it's pretty obvious then that you need to take the fittings off first.  And I don't think I've ever seen a Dana 50 axle with fittings in the caps anyway.  Oh, I suppose I should mention one other caveat.  My Bronco Dana 44 has chromoly axle shafts with stronger U-joints than stock.  The U-joint on that doesn't fit through the knuckle.  I had to file some slight reliefs in the ID of the knuckle to get the shafts installed, then I need to line the shafts up with those notches to remove them.  But it's pretty obvious that it's the U-joints catching in the knuckle, not the shaft being held in the diff.  And this is only an issue with non-stock parts.

The passenger side has a slip joint with a rubber boot over it.  If that slip joint is frozen you might have issues (both in disassemble and in use).  If not, take off the clamps that hold the boot in place and the passenger side stub shaft and outer axle should slide out through the knuckle (after removing the spindle of course).  I've never had any trouble with this.

To get the rest of the passenger side out there are a couple of designs.  Yours with the retaining bolds "should" just pull out after removing the bolts.  I've never worked on one of these so I don't know how hard it might be.  The other design has a C clip on the inside.  You have to pull the pumpkin to get the C clip out.  Pulling the pumpkin is a pain, but the C clip and then axle come out easily.