Chirping, stuttering sound coming from my rear end....

I totally get it. Just amazed any brand truck deaker would tell a customer a blown u-joint requires a new driveshaft. If the dealer told me that I'd laugh my ass off right in front of them.

To me replacing whole assemblies is one step closer to idiocracy coming true. Granted I'm not a normal customer. I've only taken my truck to the dealer once for repair in over 5 years and that's because I didn't gave the time to fix it myself.

 

You get it, but then say it is one step closer to idiocracy? If you got it, then you would understand the reasoning behind why it is done that way. It is in most cases more cost effective overall. It may not look that way, but you also have to take into account that you don't fix 100,000 cars and trucks a day like Toyota does. Toyota, like other manufacturers sometimes will also lock out "unit repairs" in order for them to get entire assemblies back for them to inspect for cause of failure, and testing. Remember that we have had an issue with drive shaft vibration for a while. Perhaps they are requiring all drive shafts to be returned as complete units for testing and evaluation. It happens all the time. I remember when the Allison transmission first came out in the GM trucks. That exact transmission was years old, but for the first year we were not allowed to even pull the oil pan on it. If there was ANY internal failures at all we were to replace the entire unit so that the failed unit could be sent back, without anything being tampered with.