Title says it all. I may need to replace pickup coil in my 91 XLT 3.0L 5-speed. I see I need to pull the shaft out to do so. Can I get it out without removing the intake manifold? That looks painful - fuel rails, ignition coil, a lot of other crap, and some large torx bolts that look awful. So I’m hoping to avoid that.

 

Well, I can't find my Haynes manual that covers your engine and year right now, but I'd be willing to bet a 6-pack the answer is "no". I expect there's one bolt holding the distributor down (in the hole and the gear in contact with the camshaft) and keeping it from spinning and messing up the ignition timing. By distributor shaft I assume you mean the one from the rotor down to the gear. You'll likely need to remove the cap and rotor, so make diagrams of where your wires go, but then it should pull straight out with the bolt and keeper removed. Put the motor at TDC for cylinder #1 first and make marks where the rotor is before taking out the distributor. Change the o-ring while you've got it out and you'll probably have one less oil leak.

 

You win a six pack. I tackled this yesterday and I could not have written the procedure I did better than you just did.