[shorod]

On earlier Taurii, yes, the ball joint was an integral part of the lower control arm. However, in 1996 Ford went to a different control arm setup, and the ball joint is pressed into the steering knuckle. You can replace the entire knuckle with a new one (includes hub, bearings, and ball joint) or can replace the ball joint by itself.

I suspect the difficulty you are having is mostly due to having the knuckle loose from the strut. When using the pickle fork the knuckle is able to flop around so all of the energy is not going towards wedging the ball joint loose from the control arm.

You may want to loosly set the knuckle back onto the strut and use a pickle fork.

You have removed the nut from the bottom of the ball joint, right?

-Rod