I'm going to share my experience of replacing my carrier bearing (or center support bearing) on my 06 Dodge Ram quad cab long bed. The carrier bearing cost about $120.00. Tools I used were hammer, bigger hammer, 15" adjustable wrench, 3' of 1" metal conduit, 10" 3 jaw puller, threaded 1-1/2" x 10" galvanized steel pipe nipple. If done correctly, it should only take a few hours.

The reason I changed this is because my truck was violently shaking between 30-40 mph. The bearing looked fine, all I could see was that the rubber was dry rotted, but not ripped or broken. Replacing it fixed the shaking.

I first removed the section of drive shaft from the propeller shaft u-joint, to the transfer case. you could also remove the entire rear drive shaft, just make sure everything is marked so it lines back up. Then I took the section of drive shaft inside to work on because it was 10 degrees Fahrenheit outside.

Put the drive shaft in a vise, remove the boot clamps and slide the propeller shaft and boot off. If you have an actual bearing puller or splitter, it will fit right on the bearing. Autozone has a 10" puller in their loan-a-tool program, however it has a maximum reach of 3.5". It literally says on the box "10 inch puller, max reach 3.5 inch, max width 5 inch" Then they have a 5" puller that will reach 5.5". It was the dumbest thing I have ever seen. Autozone didn't have actual bearing pullers, just universals. If you have a cheap basic universal puller like mine, you will have to mutilate the bearing, and take the back plate off to fit the puller on it. For me, pulling the bearing off was tough, impact driver wouldn't do it, needed a big wrench and a 3 ft breaker bar, and it was tight until it was all the way off.

There is another piece that comes off with the bearing. the service manual refers to it as a boot collar, but my boot did not even touch it. It looks like more of a dust cap for the bearing.

The next part is where I messed up. You can see in the pictures that I slid the bearing on, then the "boot collar", then I first tried a combination of the old bearing, a 1-1/2" galvanized coupling, and the propeller shaft. Then I viciously beat the propeller shaft for about an hour. I realized that the propeller shaft was binding and not delivering the hammer blows, and I really wasn't making any progress. So I ran to the hardware store and picked up the 10 inch nipple. The next combination was new bearing, boot collar, and the nipple with the coupling threaded on it. After another hour, no progress again. I took the boot collar off and saw that it was actually wedging between the shaft and the bearing, so the bearing wasn't moving, and I beat the snot out the boot collar. I tried the bearing, then the good threaded end of the pipe nipple. The 1-1/2" galvanized nipple fits PERFECTLY onto the bearing. 20-30 BFH blows later and the bearing was on. I flattened the boot collar out and painted it blue (because I could!) and then pounded that on. Slid the boot on, propeller shaft, I reused the old clamps, and it was done. I slapped a new u-joint on and remounted the bearing and shaft and went for a ride in the snow.