You don't have to remove the men to change out the bearings. They will come off without taking any pins out.
Changing them from one rod to another isn't necessary. The best thing to do is take them off, clean them (409 will do) and when you replace them, put what was the top half of the bearing on the bottom. Most the friction from the rods is on the bottom half of the two bearing pieces, so the bottom one will wear faster than the top one. By switching them around, not only will you have bearings that feel almost new, but you'll increase their life as well.
One note: You'll find that the 3 man and 5 man rod bearings wear out the fastest, so if you needed, you could switch them out with the goalie rod bearings. As the goalie rod bearings don't recieve as much friction, they don't wear out as fast and tend to be the best set on the table.
So if you simply swap the bearings around ( top half to bottom half ), you'll get lots more play out of them before you actually have to replace them.
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