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.
