I haven't taken the tripode out yet, and fearing the propagation of inaccurate information, I'll park the thread for a bit, and close it with fact when I'm smarter. I suspect that the tool pictured in the Ford manual is to hold the gears in place once the tripodes are removed, and that both sides tripodes come off with a spoon equiped slide hammer.
The core reason for the work in this area is to find a longer axle for the custom suspension I'm building. The Contour uses the formed subframe that I can't duplicate. My frame needs to be wide enough to clear the AC pump on one side, and the tranny bump on the other. My custom control arms are already about as short as they can be, so moving the frame rails outward means using a longer axle inside the halfshaft assembly. In case I didn't mention in this thread, the power is midengine in this car, and I use T-bird knuckles instead of spindles. I have learned through some great guys at A1 Driveshaft, that many Ford products use the same spline down inside the halfshaft. So I've been hunting the various applications for the right length. I'll then assemble what I call a "Franken-shaft"... parts of several cars. The Contour axle is 15 1/2 inch. The Taurus is a bit over what I targeted. It's 17 1/4 long. Curious, some Dodge products use the same spline. From one of the vans, A1 found me an option that is 16 1/4 long. Now I need to re-jig the suspension with these two longer options, articulate the knuckles to define the camber arc, see where the pludge of the tripode ends up, and then adjust the overall width between frame rails. At some point the tripodes may need to come off, but for now I know that I don't need to remove them to find different axle lengths.
One good discovery note to this, is that fact that Taurus guys who want an MXT75 instead of an automatic can build their franken-shaft with Contour tripodes, and Taurus axles.
There, I hi-jacked my own thread, but it makes it more clear why I started it in the first place. I was also a little turned off by the attitude I was sensing in some replies. Moderators can edit all this custom stuff out as they see fit.
