So that damned inner bearing spacer has been a major problem.
I finally asked my son to get involved and while I applied continuous heat from the torch he managed to finally get a flathead in the gap and some progress was made in getting it moving away from the base.
I had hoped to get it completely off but it was like we hit a stand still with it.
There’s progress compared to the my other attempts but it is still not completely free.
I work on it a bit more later today.