05 tacoma u joints

can i tell if my u joints are bad by looking at them or moving around the drive shaft?

 

Get a pry bar in between the shaft and joints from different angles.Watch and check all.any play is not good a lot of playBad..

 

You might get lucky and find a bad one if it is really worn excessively without removing the shaft.

The best check is to remove the shaft from the truck and manually feel each joints full range of movement by hand.

 

if you have OEM u joints, you can look at the rubber seals on the spider and see if they are broken. If they are, then this allows them to start rusting and eventually you will hear a chirp when at low speeds, meaning its time to replace. Ive replaced three on my prerunner so far and got 175k out of them before i had them changed.