Andrew you have done a lot of work on E53 axles...and wrote up the very effective procedure earlier this year I used to free up an axle frozen in the hub.

But once you have the outer CV axle free from the hub, it's usually pretty easy to remove the inner CV axle, particularly on passenger front side - you don't have to remove the stiffening plate.

Why wouldn't you just remove the whole axle and replace the outer CV joint on a bench in a vise?