"I like the drum-on-backwards trick."
Can't say I came up with that myself...but it is useful trick that was passed along to me. I was going to buy an HF slide hammer for this, but figured I'd give this method a try first and it worked. If I need to pull the unit bearing race that is pressed into the axle housing, I may still need to pick up the slide hammer. I don't intend to change the unit bearings and thus would normally leave the race in place, but the seal inboard of the unit bearing race looks like it might need to be replaced, and that would require removing the race. These unit bearings are grease packed for lubrication and thus the differential fluid does need to be kept out of the area. TBD...