Yeah, it's a bigger pain in the ass than it sounds like. Indeed, without the proper previous planning, we disconnected my cables at the calipers and I drove without a parking brake at all for a good month or so. My car's an ATX, so I just was careful about parking on level surfaces, and there was a certain novelty to pulling the handbrake on the highway, but reinstalling the stuff wasn't easy and now my parking brake only really grabs if you pull the handle to the VERY top. My wife's '96 Contour cinches tight with 4 clicks. But the most important thing is that my rear calipers won't drag anymore.
Anyway, the problem areas are dropping the heat shields, pulling the console, getting the handbrake mech to release tension (if there's an easy way to do it we couldn't find it), and then re-tensioning the mechanism. Also, we found out that the replacement cables are being discontinued. Just FYI.
