It's been about a year since I removed the one of the rear door vacuum door lock elements to repair it. I now have the vacuum element sitting here waiting to go back in but for the life of me, I cannot recall how I removed it from the bottom end of the door lock rod.

The end of the rod that attaches to the vacuum piece is threaded. The top part of the vacuum element that the rod feeds into is also threaded. No brainer, right?
Well, the rod is bolted down against the door frame so it can't move around much at all. In order to thread the rod into the vacuum element, I would have to spin the entire vacuum piece...but that can't happen since there's really not enough room to do this since it would mean that the rod would have to flex around quite a bit.

How the heck did I get it off to begin with? (since this would obviously involve UN-threading the rod. Is there a trick to this?

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Chris
1985 300SD - 'Grace' (198K mi.)
2018 Honda Civic Sport
2018 Honda CRV LX
2010 Honda Fit Sport (RIP)
2013 Honda Accord Sport (Sold)
1996 Lexus LS400 (Retired)
1995 Ford Contour SE (Retired)
1976 Porsche 914 (Sold)
1972 Datsun 240Z (RIP)