Travis, the guy who works on my house, who is also from a 3rd or 4th generation farm family, saw me yesterday working my ass off with the gear puller that I borrowed from Autozone. He says that tomorow he'll bring me a real puller. I'm like, sure, as if it will make any difference. So today he gives me three different pullers, the smallest having about 3 times the metal as the Autozone one. The Autozone one looks like a toy. Sure enough, after heating the bearing until it glowed red, and with still some effort, the puller took the bearing off the axle. Now I can go back to step two. It only took three days to complete step one.