If you do one ball joint change them all, you don't want to do this work twice. Yes there are special tools needed, a splitting fork is one. There are things you can hit with a BFH and things you should not. Hammering on the TRE stud is not a good idea ever.
You can download the FSM here on RF for free and it has all the info you could ever need in it.
http://www.ramforum.com/f77/2nd_gen_service_manual-986/
I agree with you. The issue is that I'm having trouble convincing my dad to order the upper joints as well. I'm 17, and though I've been looking for a job, I don't have enough money to order it. I see the point about the tre stud, I know my tie rods are good and I don't want to screw things up. A guy in a Facebook group told me that since I have an air hammer and a cutting tool, it'll make the rivets a lot easier. He told me that I need to simply cut an 'X' in the rivet heads, and hammer them out with the air hammer, and he said it'll make it super easy compared to grinding and drilling and hammering the hell out of them.
As a little side story, instead of dealing with ball joints this weekend, I replaced my heater core and dash top (ordered a DRD8-1 dash top from Geno's garage). I can say, it was quite a big job, especially for me; the most I've ever done before is replace my shocks. I managed to do it without draining freon, without disconnecting my A/C lines, and without draining any more coolant than just what was in my radiator. Quite an interesting experience... I never disconnected my shifter linkage so my truck actually shifted into gear at one point while removing the dash... Keep in mind that I had disconnected my parking brake lever. Hadn't thought to put some bricks in front of my tires. The truck started rolling forward, and I managed to stop it about two feet before the front bumper would have rammed into our boat's trailer hitch in my garage (I had it parked about five feet outside of the garage door). Called my mom on my phone while holding the truck, pushing hard, and had her hold it while I grabbed some bricks. Pretty terrifying. There were several times during the job where I totally felt defeated and wanted to give up but knew I couldn't. The way I got the heater core in without disconnecting the a/c was by literally pushing the A/C lines about four inches into the firewall to get the HVAC housing to come undone enough to get the heater core to fit. Just barely got the heater core in, and it didn't have swiveling lines. After assembling everything, my A/C didn't work. I spent a while trying to figure out why, and then my motor wouldn't start... Turned out to be that the main connector under the dash hadn't been tightened enough. After that everything worked. Check engine light was on though, code P0443, which had to do with the evaporative emissions thingy, so I wiggled the connections on the solenoid/pump or whatever it is, and made sure my gas cap was tight. After that it went away. So yeah, that was my weekend. Stressful, but fun occasionally. Big learning experience. Now I have hot heat that doesn't smell like coolant, and a dash that isn't cracked. Still need a new bezel though.
