Weight fell off driveline?

While greasing my zerks, and taking off the heat shield where the front driveline meets the carrier bearing, this little weight came off, and batta bing batta boom, found where it went. Is this something to worry about? No weird vibrations in 2wd or 4wd. If it's an issue how would I re attach it?

 

That weight is just like the wheel weights on your wheels and is used to balance it to stop harmonic vibrations

With that weight removed you will feel/notice a vibration at speed

 

Wouldnt I only notice it in 4wd? How would I go about getting it reattached

 

Yes only when you're in 4wd and the only way to reattach is taking the driveshaft to a shop that builds these , they can rebalance the driveshaft for you

 

Weird, didn't notice anything today when I was doing 50 plus I 4wd up the pass

 

If you don't do extensive off roading and you didn't notice any vibrations at 50MPH I wouldn't worry about it.
I would be more concerned concerned about the nasty corrosion under the weight causing a stress riser which
could cause the drive shaft to break under heavy loads during extreme offroad trips such as rock crawling. If
you do not put very heavy loads on it I would just clean up the corrosion and seal with a good product such as
POR 15. I would also assume similar corrosion exists under the remaining weight as well and treat that area also.
Good luck

 

I would get some JB weld and glue it back on.

 

You don’t really need to go that far if you can see exactly where it fell off. Just reattach the weight in the same spot. Tac welding would probably be best. Not entirely sure epoxy would hold up to 5500 rpm

 

I agree. If epoxy were a viable option we'd see it used frequently. However, I did the math because I'm a weirdo and 5500rpm on the front shaft would end up being 136mph if he has stock gears and 31" tires. Hopefully he's not doing that in 4WD.

Either way OP, you should remove that drive shaft and bring it in to be re-balanced. It's typically dirt cheap. Most of the time they'll end up painting it for you too so there's no exposed metal to rust after welding it.

 

This would be my concern as well. That is a broken driveshaft in the making. I seriously doubt a driveline shop would weld the weight back on for that reason

 

The only thing you need to replace is that drive shaft, good Lord what's up with the rust?

 

seeing that driveshaft and a few bolts in the area of the photo, I'd be very concerned about what the rest of the frame is doing.

 

Agreed. Perhaps the rust caused the weight to fall off?

 

That's good to hear it's cheap. I'd probably just have them remove it to be honest. As a full time student and employee I really dont have the time

 

Hard to see but it's mostly dirt. Rest of the frame still looks black.

 

The truck is 11 years old.

 

As mentioned above, just get it rebalanced.

 

Also, if you're a student who works for a living, I'd take the half hour out of my time instead of paying shop rates to remove the driveshaft. It's just a few bolts. Just mark one point on each end on both the drive shaft and mating points to make sure it goes back on the way it came off. This really shouldn't matter with a balanced shaft, but it's a good overall practice.

 

I see so many people saying to mark the flanges. Think about it for a minute. When the factory balances the driveshaft, do you think they do it with the axle flange and transfer case flange attached to the driveshaft? No, the transfer case is built in Colorado, the axle assembly in North Dakota, the driveshaft in Utah, and it's all put together in Texas. OK, maybe not, but the point is, the axle and transfer case flanges had their 1st date with the driveshaft on the assembly line.

 

Can you drive it this way? It's my only vehicle