Replace Carrier Bearing or Drive shaft

2013 Tacoma 4wd double cab
Was under the truck today changing the oil and looks like I finally need a new carrier bearing pretty soon. Theres a little rust on the slip yoke, not sure how far it goes.
Im not confident I can replace it over a weekend and I cant find a mechanic around me who will replace just the carrier bearing.
I know.. I know... Its cheaper just to replace the carrier bearing. but I cant be without my truck M-f currently.
Still weighing my options. Question is, Anyone know who makes a decent after market drive shaft for our trucks?

I might replace the drive shaft with a new one and change out the carrier bearing then swap them back. then either sell or keep a spare drive shaft.

 

Yes you can source a full replacement drive shaft. If you do a search you'll see complete assemblies for reasonable prices, but you'll get spanked on the shipping. Depending on where you live, you could get a distributor to bring one in. I was faced with the same decision in august and the cheapest shaft I could find was a Dorman unit for north of $1,100. For $275, a local drive shaft company replaced the U joints, carrier bearing and carrier bearing mount - all with Spicer OEM parts. They also spin balanced and put a coat of black paint on it as well. My carrier bearing mount was sloppy and even though there was no play in the U joints, there was a noticeable clunk from the lack of lube in the slip yoke. It all turned out great, but I was able to part with the truck for a while. Needing the truck M-F presents an expensive problem. Maybe source one at a wrecking yard and have it rebuilt.

I wish you good fortune.

 

Thanks... Doing that research now. We'll see... To be honest im ready for a new truck. The plan was to buy a Tundra next year, and keeping m Tacoma for my outdoor excursions.

 

Hi, good evening. I'm thinking that if you're gonna replace just the carrier bearing, it definitely can be done in a day or less. There's quite a few YouTube videos on it along with lubing the slip yolk. There's a nice post in here how to do it also.

Carrier Bearing Replacement:
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/how-to-replacing-carrier-bearing.260283/

 

Thank you. Was looking into that as well.

 

Pull the driveshaft and drive in 4hi. Get the driveshaft you pull rebuilt. Re-install. Not that hard.

 

I just replaced my carrier bearing and the ujoints after 105k miles of fairly rough life. Night and day difference- the existing bearing had noticeable slop. I got the Amazon 3- Spicer ujoint+bearing cheap kit, tossed the included bearing and bought a OEM carrier bearing. It took a couple days to do because I cleaned up the drive shaft pieces and rust binded/painted some of it. Used a bench vice and sockets to do the ujoints. Went well after I did the first one.

Some of the youtube videos are very helpful. If you end up doing the bearing, make sure to mark with a paint pen or punch where the various ends meet each other and the tcase/diff so you keep everything in phase.