The first time I did rear plugs, I ratcheted the engine forward and all of that business... it's not a bad method of doing the OEM plugs if you only do them about every 100K.

Eventually, I just learned to do it by feel. It's tight back there, but not impossible. I find it easiest to (carefully) climb up on the engine bay and reach down behind the engine. You might just want to try that before going to the trouble of removing the dogbones and what not, maybe it won't be too bad.