That's what I thought, and that's one of the reasons I decided to go in through the inner joint, since I wasn't sure how easily I could find a new collar nut locally. Going in through the inner joint is actually pretty straightforward in principle, as it's easy to knock the tripod joint off the axle with a hammer and a punch. It's just the the overall job has a lot of steps that make it pretty time-consuming, and if you do it without an assistant like I did, maneuvering the heavy axle/strut/hub assembly can be a real pain. Hopefully, this will be a once-in-the-life-of-the-vehicle job.

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2003 X5 4.4i
1992 Porsche 968
2007 328i
2014 Subaru Forester XT