Doc I promise I'll post plenty of pics when the desktop is up and running again. For now I only have the pics I uploaded to photobucket. The reason I'm pulling gears is that I have to get to the brass synchro rings. They are the gold colored "gears" in this pic. Sorry it's the best I have for now but you can see the gold color:
As you can see, they are in the middle which is why I have to remove the gears too. In this case I'm doing the rebuild to replace the synchro rings too and possibly the hub assembly. I have a picture of my bearing separator in photobucket:
There are bearing separator sets on Ebay. I paid like $30 for mine. Here's a pic from Ebay of what it looks like to set up to pull except that the separator is wrong side up. It should be flat side up like in the picture above:
That's pretty much what mine looks like. If you are just replacing the bearings, a standard bearing separator / puller set should work just fine and would be all you need if you were just replacing the bearings. The bearings do come off just fine. So far no other special tools.
I was advised at one of the dealerships that I should not preorder parts before I take the trans apart so that I could inspect things and replace only what's needed. In your case, at this point, you have sort of the same problem my other car has only mine is all weather. When you let the clutch out the input shaft, being where the power from the engine comes into the transmission, rotates with the engine. When you push the clutch in you are separating the power from the engine from the trans, the input shaft (which inputs power from the engine) stops turning and the noise stops too. It's your input shaft bearing or bearings that sound like they're going. Real cheap. Lucky you.
Make sure the fluid is full.
Doc, I want to eventually delete this thread and re-post a whole rebuild thread with pics. Right now there are a couple of hold ups, the biggie being my broken desktop. But I promise, there will be plenty of pictures.