Marzocchi open bath oil seal removal

My 2000 Marzocchi Z1 CR open bath mountain bike forks spewed oil out of one of the legs. This apparently happens because damage to the stanchions damages the oil seals, which then leak oil during fork compression. The service manual available from Enduro Fork Seals is good, but the stage for removing the old oil seals proved to be pretty much impossible using the screwdriver method suggested:

Top: Screwdriver wrapped in tape. Middle: Tyre lever. Bottom: Spanner wrapped in tape

The screwdriver didn't move the seals at all (tape is important so as to not damage the upper edge of the fork, where the dust seal sits), and was actually bending. The tyre lever idea suggested somewhere on singletrackworld forums sounded good, making damaging the fork lower impossible, but the lever was going to fold in half before budging the seal (kind of predictable given that the screwdriver was bending I suppose). My spanner idea worked well. A bit of cardboard protected the floor, and a socket extension stopped the spanner falling over while prizing the seal out with my weight on the spanner. I used an 11/16" spanner, not wanting to risk damage to a useful metric spanner.

(It worked best with the spanner the way up shown in the first of these two photos).

Putting weight near the taped end of the spanner allowed the seal to be prized off pretty easily by carefully pulling back (left) on the fork lower, then rotating it ~120 degrees, and repeating, until the seal came gently out.

I did try heating the whole thing up with hot water, but this didn't seem to make it any easier.

I accept no responsibility if you snap your fork, poke yourself in the eye, burst into flames, or whatever, if using this method. The safest plan is to just take the fork to a shop to be serviced.

[edit] Check out the 3rd post in this thread... this is why I gave up on the screwdriver method! [/edit]