I went over to the passenger side today and pulled out the axle and found that it too had the tone ring pressed on way too far. So I got out the grinder and went after the retaining ring and the tone ring with perfect success. No damage done to the axle. The secret, as far as I’m concerned is, that you don’t have to grind more than 2/3 of the way through those pieces before you can crack them with a chisel. I used my trusty Milwaukee 4-1/2” magnum grinder with a fat grinding wheel, not a thin cut off wheel. I think cutting with a thin wheel is more dangerous. With a grinding wheel that is about 1/4” - 5/16” thick you grind away the pieces rather than try to cut them.I think this is better than trying to guess how deep your narrow cutting wheel, whether on a Dremel tool or a grinder, is cutting. So now I just have to find one axle and buy two tone rings and two retaining rings. Amazon has the Dorman brand tone rings for $38 each and Toyota OEM retaining rings for the ridiculous price of $21 each. They are going to get my order though, because nobody can deliver as fast and as cheap.

Cancel that last idea. I discovered that a wrecking yard, just a few miles from my house, has a pair of axles for a reasonable price, so now I’m going to go that route. Rather than order some new tone wheels and retaining rings and have to wait several days for that stuff to arrive I should have the axles in hand by tomorrow afternoon and I found that my local NAPA auto parts store is able to get the retaining rings under the SKF brand by 8 AM tomorrow. The axle shafts that I pulled off my vehicle have newer backing plates, so I will be reusing those and installing my bearing service kits sourced from Marlin Crawler, which came with Nachi bearings and OEM retaining rings, snap rings and seals. I think I’m going to have a little fun too, cutting up an old axle housing and working with some other steel pieces to make some axle specific press accessories.