How do I remove this wretched faucet?

[creperum]

I am trying to replace the leaky faucet in my kitchen. The first step on the instructions for the new faucet are, "Remove old faucet;" reasonably enough, they don't give any more hints about how to accomplish this.

I crawled under the kitchen sink and am confronted with this:


I am pretty sure that the U-shaped piece nestled around the copper tubes is what's holding the faucet in place. As far as I can tell, the only thing holding the U-shaped piece in place is the white plastic hose (which leads to the sprayer), so I tried unscrewing the brass nut at the base of the white hose. It unscrewed for a ways, and the faucet assembly got looser and looser, but then at a certain point the nut jams and won't turn any further, but the white hose is still attached to the U-shaped piece.

I can see two possibilities here:

1. The white hose is supposed to detach from the U-shaped piece, but it's got stuck in place, and I'll have to cut it off somehow to remove the old faucet.
2. I am wrong about what is holding the faucet on, and I should be going about this in a totally different way, which is a complete mystery to me since I can't see what else would be holding the facuet in place.

The faucet is made by Moen, and I think it's 7400-series. I tried Google but didn't find anything that looks like my accursed U-shaped piece. Is this a recognized faucet-attaching piece of hardware? Can anyone help me out with how to remove this thing?

Thanks very much!!


P.S. Sorry that picture is so huge, I couldn't figure out how to make it display smaller.

 

[Jadnashua]

This is a guess...pull the spray head up, unscrew the hose from it and let it drop into the cabinet. Then, remove the other end from the u-shaped bracket. Then, you can probably get the nut off all the way. My guess is that the nut holding that hose to the connection is what is blocking that nut on the u-bracket from backing fully off.

The water supply hoses may use a spring lock mechanism to hold them in place. Make sure the water supply is shut off, and then, if there's a ring on them, you slide that one way, and it will unlock the connection and you can pull it apart. They're usually spring loaded, so it is sometimes a three-handed operation!

 

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[Terry]

You will need to remove the hose, and then the nut that holds the U-Clamp.

If all else fails, that's what saw blades are for.

And yes...........there are no instructions for removing a faucet. Too many brands and types, and at times too much rust.

Here is one where I drilled the nut off.