Folks, thank you one and all. The axles got pulled this morning and I changed out the outter CV boots. Your suggestin that the axles need to "pop" out was absolutely correct. Here's what I did ...
For the driver's side I took the short crow bar I was using (probably 18" in length) and modified it with my inexpensive bench grinder. I ground down the tapered wedge, so rather than having say a 25 degree angle the angle was much shallower. (Actually I tried to remove most of the taper). Next I ground the edge that contacts the tulip to have a slightly circular arc in it. So when I put the tool up to the rounded tulip it fit nicely against it. So the tool engaged MORE of the pry ridge of the driver's side tulip and since the face was mostly flat, the taper didn't tend get wedged OUT and off the edge of the tulip. (If I can figure out how to post a pic of my modified tool I will).
Anyway I took the tool and then placed a 3/8" drive 15 or 16mm socket on the tranny case near where the edge of the modified crow bar face was hitting the tulip. This placed the fulcum point VERY near the to where the edge of the crow bar face was. All I did was hit the end of the crow bar with a light 16oz. hammer (someone had borrowed my 3 lb hammer) and bam, one hit, and the axle POPPED out. Damn.... That's all it took. The 'secret' as you all said was a quick popping hit, not to try to pressure the axle out. One slightly off center hit, rather weak, and the axle popped. No one was more surprised than me.
Next came the passenger side. There was a cross bar in the tranny, presumably holding the spider gears in place so I didn't see an easy way to put something in there and pound the passenger side axle side out. So here's what I did. I wedged my crow bar up betweem the passenger tulip and tranny housing on what I'll call the front of the axle center line. Think about it for a minute. The axle is at the back of the tranny, the center line of the axle can create a plane. There's a front and rear. Looking from the top (or bottom) my crow bar front edge was at the front of the plane (closer to the front of the car). The passenger side tulip is tappered, so I made sure that back of the crow bar met the taper at an angle. So rather than trying to wedge directly to the side of the car (the hub), I wedged at an angle, I'm guessing 30 degrees. It's easy to see and visualize if you see the passenger side tulip and see the tapper. So you are pulling slightly to the back of the car and mostly to the side.
So rather than this ...
------------------------------> trying to wedge toward the hub
It's more like this (This is the Front of the car).
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You are wedging to the outside but slightly to the back of the car.
All I did is have my crow bar up in place with it's 'back' on the taper of the tulip. I made sure the flat side of my crow bar was flat against the tulip. Then I lightly held the crow bar in place and rocked my body and shoulder, kinda of pumping so that when I straightened out my arm from the pull, all my weight going slightly backwards would pop against the tulip. Once again, it popped first time. The trick was getting the crow bar flat against the tulip and rocking in a 1-2-3 motion so that when I powered slightly backwards my full weight was pulling as my arm extended.
The outter portion of the CV joints were NOT press fit as I thought. My axles were two piece; a stubbing outter piece that fit into the hub and the long bar that fit into the tranny. It was held in place by a snap ring. I tried using my snap ring extender pliers that did force the snap ring out far enough. So all I did was just a pair of short needle nose pliers and force the snap ring apart. I did this by myself. One hand forced the ring apart (spread the snap ring) and I tugger slightly on the outter CV hub. It came right off. (I did have the axle sitting on a block of wood so that the outter hub portion was off the ground).
After that it was a breeze. I cleaned up all the old grease with shop paper towels. The old torn boots got pulled off. I cleaned everything up and forced new grease in the CV bearing/tulip. I was to relieved to have gotten so far so fast today that I took a break and went to Auto Zone and purchased a CV band crimper. (neither Sears nor Pep Boys ad the tool). The outter CV boots that I got from NAPA needed to be crimped. Rather than hosing up the job, I spung for the $10 for the tool. The crimp looks like this ...
Before crimp:
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After crimp
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The tool creates a "T" shape. It compresses the band IN towards each other. Best $10 I ever spent.
Anyway the job is done, many thanks to you all for your assistance.
