Greasing Drive Shaft U-Joints: A Short Writeup

The u joints have the yokes that are actually attached to the shaft and the cross joint which is what ties the two yokes (and shafts) together. The zerks are drilled into the center of cross part and can be tricky to get to. You may need to spin the shaft around to see them and get them pointed the right direction to grease. THe front shafts spin easily by hand as long as you aren't in 4WD. With the rear shaft, I put it in neutral and push the truck around a little. Don't run over your head in the process!

 

Is the support bearing on extra cab models greasable? I'm getting some intermittent vibrations down there. I pulled the prop shaft from a wreck last year for cheap to replace a destroyed u-joint.

 

Well take that 90% & a work light, crawl underneath your truck & start checking all drive shafts, slip yokes, U joints etc; & look/feel for grease zirks...

 

I gave my '11 its first oil change the other day at 1,100 miles. While I was under there I hit the grease fittings.....the u-joints were drier than a popcorn fart. The three zerks on the rear shaft took 6 pumps from my regular, full size grease gun before they started to talk, the fronts need 4.

Did the same thing to my '07 when it was new in '06 and they weren't that bad.

So if you've recently bought a new Tacoma, you might want to crawl underneath it and give your U-joints some grease!

 

Good for you changing the oil at 1,000 instead of what ever they recommend and greasing the U joints. Scary that they would deliver a brand new truck with dry U's. What a shame.

 

I new to grease zerks and i not sure what they called nipple or zerks.. i not know how do it, what i need buy tools for it? what kind grease or lube?
let me know thanks

 

Here's the location of the zerks on the front drive shaft. being on the truck made it a little more difficult to grease, but not much more. I didn't have to remove the stock skid plate (as some suggested was necesarry) to get them both though.[/QUOTE]


My question is, I never do that, I still search to learn, That one picture, so I can use grease gun on one zerks, or I need to take all bolts off, then i grease it all old come out then i put back? I little not sure.. Let me know thanks!

 

You don't take any bolts out. Grease the zerks til grease come out - run a paper towel or rag thru from one side to the other to clean it up and U R done. That's what I do.

 

Thanks! What kinds should i get grease?

 

Wow, the 2nd tacoma don't have many zerk fitting. There is about 10 zerk fittings on all the drive lines on my tacoma.

 

Would it be ok to use marine grease to lube the zerk fittings or should i go get the normal grease?

 

Did my 1st grease job yesterday....01 4x4 reg cab.

Found 7 zerks....3 on front shaft...1 shaft, 2 u-joints
4 on rear shaft....1 shaft, 3 u-joints

Very easy to do but the rear shaft took many pumps and I was worried about over greasing??....any thoughts on this?

Not sure if I was supposed to see the old grease come out any where?...the front shaft was the same.

U-joints were quite obvious after a few pumps.

 

In case anyone reading this has trouble greasing the front zerks - I always did - the solution is to use a small one hand grease gun. You can easily push coupling on to the zerks. I always had a hard time getting coupling to lock on with the larger two handed gun - the grease always shot out around the zerk instead of going in it.

 

Just did my 30k service on my '10 prerunner; went under with my gun loaded ready to blast away and I found exactly 0 zerks.

 

Do all Prerunner have 0 zerks or only certain one?

 

Does anyone one have pics or can tell all the locations for zerks. I want to re grease everything.

Thanks

 

Greasing Zerks

 

Since the PreRunners have no zerk fittings, it would be interesting to see how many have had failures due to this. So far, my truck is nearing 70K ('08) and no sign of a problem...

 

There is nothing that gripes me more than an "unservicable" U joint or any other contact point that requires lubrication, all auto/truck manufacturers stick us with "perma-lube" sealed bearings/U joints/etc:

Yeah , they're permanent right up to the point of failure & they will, luckily all mine are servicable, I still have the original OEM U joints & even at 206k they are still performing flawlessly, only attribitable because I can grease them when I want to, which is often..

 

on my 1st gen 1988 4x4 truck i had i never greased anything and drove it 300k miles with no issues.

i just greased my 2nd gen 2009 reg cab 4x4 today with 50k miles on it. there are 4 zerks on it. one on each u-joint at the end of each drive shaft.