I am in the process of replacing a rear wheel bearing on my 1993 Townace and am doing this without a hydraulic press. To wit:
1) get vehicle in the air with tire removed. Drain differential oil.
2) pull brake drum , remove front shoe, undo two retaining bolts to remove E-brake. Undo brake line .
3) I put the drum back on the studs BACKWARDS and put the lug nuts back on . This gives you a place to whack the whole assembly to jar the
old bearing out of its pocket and it may take a couple of good swings.
4) pull whole axle out.
6) I used a cheap Dremel tool to cut the wheel bearing off of the axle. The Dremel thin cutoff wheels are stupendous in cutting through hard metal ! You can use a small scale or a mark on a toothpick to watch your depth. The bearing thickness is about 3/16" thick in the middle and is about 1/4" thick at the edges of the race. ****IMPORTANT****** Wrap a layer of metal around the diameter of the seal collar and tape it in place. I am right handed and the Dremel will kick up when the wheel grabs in the slot and it would damage the collar in an instant. **** See photos .. When I felt that the slots ( one on each side 180 degrees apart ) thusly cut were generally deep enough , I put a cold chisel in the slot and began to whack. The bearing cracked open --Voila! I managed to cut the race off and did not nick the axle, although this probably would not harm anything. You cannot get all the way up to the sealing collar with your slot, but if you get enough material cut , you don't have to. The cold chisel with crack it anyway. You can cut all the way through the race at the bottom and you can propagate the crack from there.
7) I made a seal puller out of a piece of steel stock 1" x 1/2" . It has a 5/16 " tapped hole on one side and it is 2.410" wide . The ears that go behind the seal are about 1/8" thick. Not shown is a bar with a hole in it that bridges the mouth of the axle tube. So you get your 4" long bolt through your bar and get the puller bar nestled in behind the seal and thou crankest on the bolt with ye olde box wrench and the seal gets pulled.
8) I will follow up this post with the homemade mechanical puller that will extract the sealing collar soon.
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