I haven't done it myself, but my understanding of the rod thing is that it is diffucult to remove the hub from the knuckle, and the trick is to back out the bolts and wedge an extension or some other tool against the bolt head and start the truck and turn the steering so that the rod presses against the bolt head and thus presses the hub away from the knuckle...

 

that's it works great and you don't damage the hub or bearings just work both sides until it breaks loose

 

The dealer called me when they were changing out my front axle Ujoints. They told me I had 4 bad ball joints and "since they were in there" they'd change them for another $700. I told them to leave em alone and I'd change them myself.

I ordered Moog's off of Rock auto and Amazon.com. Went to change them about 3 months later and couldn't find any movement at all in the joints. Now the wheel bearings? that was a different story. They were bad.

So there I sit with $400 worth of Ball joints and I need $500 worth of wheel bearings.

Finally got around to changing the wheel bearings a couple of months later. The hardest thing for me was getting the dang rotors off of the unit bearings. The rotors had scaled up rust on the Id of them and they wouldn't come over the wheel mount flange. I beat on stuff for 3 hrs before I finally had to get a chisel behind them and knock the rust off.

To get the bearings out, since they were already junk, I just beat on the back of the wheel mount flange with a 3lb sledge.

I made sure everything was lubed up with antisieze before reassembling. I know I'll be back in there someday to do the balljoints.