Another brick wall trying to remove steering wheel collars

Folks,

Down to the steering shaft bearings upper snap ring. The two holes in the snap ring are really tiny and removal tool will not work. Any suggestions on how to get by this little bugger ?

I have a mass of wires attached to the turn signal assembly. Do I need to cut all of them to get the existing collars off and new ones on ?

I looked for a thread showing how this was done but no joy....service manual is not a lot of help.

Thanks
ian.