Wow, what a day. A buddy of mine that has done tons of gear installs (although not on Fords) did it with me and another friend. The one thing that was amazing to him was how freaking hard it was to get the pinion gear out. We hammered on it for almost 90 minutes and it didn't budge. Finally we ended up taking the entire rear end out and smacking it with a sledge hammer a few times to finally free it up. I looked online but didn't find anyone else really having this problem. The instructions all said something like "push the gear in, remove the flange and a few more whacks will free it up" HA! Anyway, it took us a combined 2.5 hours to figure out how to get the stupid gear out and 60 minutes to set the gears up and reinstall the rear end!
Lotsa work but WOW
Lotsa work but WOW