Chevy IFS front diff help PLEASE!!!

Zombie

Random Dead Guy
Location
Sandy Utah
Installing a lift on a 95 suburban. My buddy is letting down the front diff with a motorcycle jack (works great BTW). The passenger side axle shaft slid out of the diff. Not all the way, just an inch or so.
It wouldn't go back due to a little shim that had floated into the path of the pilot on the axle shaft.

Thatnks to the stupid method that these trucks use to engage 4x4, the passenger side tube can be removed from the diff fairly easily. We had to remove it, since the shim wouldn't move any other way. Got the shim back where it belongs, started trying to put the axle back together, and things kept moving around. I figured out that I'd have to pur part of the assembly on the tube side, with the shaft in the tube, and the put them together to make everything line up.
My problem, is that I apparently put the axle shaft side of the engagement gear on the shaft upside down, and now it won't come off. It acts like there is a snap ring in this stupid little gear, but that just floors me, since the shaft fell out. The assembly won't go back together. Ive tried to tap the side gear down with a hammer, and tried a gear puller to pull it back up, but that stupid thing won't move. There is not an access hole in the gear to release the snap ring. I'm stuck.
Please help me. I've told him we should find a D44 and start making some spring hangers, but he dosn't like this idea...
Any advice?
 
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