You might be able to get at it with a crows foot wrench on a socket. If you use two extensions with wobble ends you will get a little extra "english" on the whole thing. Or you can use a swivel. Makes it a little unwieldy but the bolt hopefully doesn't have much torque on it so it should come off somewhat easily......the problem comes when you want to get it back on Always comes apart easier! I have an old Anfim Milano which I'm told is the predecessor to the Best that I'm wanting to dive into so I'll be curious to hear what you find and how you solve it. In my book I'd rather not take the motor out unless I have no choice. I don't like muckin' with that kind of stuff.

Update:

I was finally able to remove the nut that held the lower burr carrier in place. I ended up inverting the whole grinder so I could soak the top part in a Cafiza solution. I soaked it three times in hot solution and it really loosened up the caked on coffee remnants. After this I rolled up some paper into a tight cylinder (I didn't have any wooden clothespins or soft wood pieces lying around) and stuck it through the chute to act as a stop for the fins while I tried to unscrew the nut. Using an adjustable wrench I was able to quite easily unscrew the nut after the Cafiza soaks (counter clockwise in case anyone was wondering).

As far as the doser, it seems that even with the lower burr carrier off you can't pull the shaft down because it has a stop on it (that became visible once I removed the lower burr carrier). Perhaps the shaft needs to be pulled up but I didn't want to deal with trying to unscrew the bottom of the shaft from the rest of the motor. Hope was not lost though as I was able to find a reasonably long extension arm for my ratchet set that allowed me to get at the bolt from a shallow angle even though I wasn't able to access it straight on because of the shaft. By using a ratchet head slightly larger in size than the bolt head I was able to get enough purchase on it to loosen it.

Thanks to everyone for your suggestions and advice. I am so happy to have this thing apart so I can clean it up.

tangje wrote:it seems that even with the lower burr carrier off you can't pull the shaft down because it has a stop on it (that became visible once I removed the lower burr carrier).

That stop pin can be pulled out (in case someone is curious).

Good to know! Any tips? It doesn't seem to be the kind that you push out.

I used needle nose pliers to pull it out. If you decide to do it, make sure to be gentle with it.

A little wiggle with needle nose pliers will indeed get that pin out.

Okay so now that I've taken everything apart and cleaned it up I'm having a real issue screwing the upper burr carrier back down. Upon closer inspection it seems that there is a small vertical nick in the brass thread on the grinder (not sure when I managed to do this!). The carrier screws down smoothly and then hits what feels like a stop. I can't see anything else other than the nick that could be causing it. Any suggestions?

Can you post a picture of it as is? Perhaps the same close up as picture above.

Looks like some of the threads are bit off. I bought a thread file tool and have slowly been working it out. Have gone from 1.5 turns of the upper carrier to 5.5 now. Go figure when I bought the grinder that the upper burr carrier was off! Anyway, thanks for all the help guys, I really appreciate the assistance - this community is great.

Is it me, or is your lower burr carrier broken? It looks like a big crack in one of your photos. By the lower right vein on the lower carrier, it looks like a crack in the brass carrier, nearly completely through. If that is the case, you have some serious issues.

Fortunately that was just a combination of coffee grime and lighting! Someone else actually asked about it earlier in this thread.