[Christ]

The gears do come out, and the axle tubes on your truck are press-fit into the gear housing.

The easiest and fastest solution is to replace the stick as a whole unit. Changing the gear set requires more work and downtime, since you have to both gauge preload on the bearings, and the actual contact surface between the gears, to make sure they're not engaged too far or too little on each other.

Changing the gears inside the axle pretty much is a weekend project, where changing the stick can be done in a couple hours, even if you don't know what you're really doing the first time.

If you're going to get one from a junk yard, keep a good step by step record of what you did to get it off, then do exactly that to put it back on.

Basically, you'll put the rear end on stands, with the axle just off the suspension, and just off the ground.

You'll remove both shock cartridges.

Remove the single brake line from the middle part of the axle, but leave the splitter and the lines from it to each side.

Remove the driveshaft from the axle, not from the transmission.

Remove the hangers from the leaf springs, while supporting the axle with a jack under the gear housing.

Reverse to install, don't forget to bleed your brakes when you're done.

When you remove that brake line, cap it off, so you don't lose all your fluid.