Well, since it's a forward shift unit, unfortunately for this case, the only way for either shift rod to come out, would be out the front of the transfercase, since that is where the rod has the fingers needed to catch onto the end of the shifter.
Pulling the rear housings 3 and 4 as described by the above picture, will give you access to the 2WD/4WD shift fork, which could then be removed using a punch to remove the roll pin, and then, following step #5 in my original post to remove the shift spring and detent ball, then the rod is free.........
............but the problem is that it is free to be removed from the FRONT of the case
You have no choice but to seperate the transfercase from the transmission tail housing. There is no way around this, unless you crack and break the front reduction housing of the transmission.
I suppose you could take the t/case shift base off of the transmission trail housing, and using a small die grinder (1") or a plasma cutter with a steady hand, you could cut off the front of the 4WD/2WD shift rod making sure that the cut maintains the same OD as the rest of the rod or smaller, and then you could pull the rod out the back of the t/case, and with the fingers of the rod being cut freely from the front of it, then you could retrieve the finger part out from the tail housing of the transmission, and that is how you could remove a forward shift rod without seperating the front t/case reduction housing from the trans tail housing.
But then you would have no way to install the new shift rod into the transfercase unless you cut the transmission tailhousing in half or something, rendering the transmission useless.
----> BigMike
