Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting Removing Drive Axles from the Tranny

For those who have done this before, I have to ask, how did you remove those drive axles??? I followed the Ford manual (loosen the strut at the tower, remove the lower suspension arm ball joint from the hub, pull back on the hub and tap out the halfshaft)
and it seems like I need to remove the strut in order to free up enough room to pull the drive axles out of place so that the tranny can be removed. Any suggestions???

I also damaged the halfshaft, ball joint, and tie rod boots on the passenger side removing the ball joint with the seperator. Looks like some rebuilds are in order. The driver's side came out without no hassle or damage. I wonder how much that is going to cost me?!?!?

damn, that sux....i know how it is to do all that....since we and jsmith just put in my struts and coilovers......but we made sure we took the extra time to be easy on all that stuff.....we didnt tear or break one thing

I know this is a few weeks after the fact, but I also recently did some work on my 95SE where I needed to do exactly what you did. I was wondering why you were taking yours apart? Anyway my reason was to get knuckle out to replace the wheel bearing. In my opinion, after you get halfshaft slid as far as it will go( mine was not tight, but I had rented a thing from Autozone to push it out)you DO need to take that nut completely off the strut and take the whole knuckle and strut out together. This is how I did it and reversed the procedure to put it back in. As far as the ball joints, Ford has a special puller for the tie rod end joint. I t fits around the knuckle and actually pushes against the threaded end on the bottom. Can't use a pickle fork. What I did was thread the nut off part way to protect the threads, then I jacked a bottle jack underneath against the nut and then tapped the knuckle part with a hunk of soft copper.It popped the taper loose.