Developed Axle Wrap after Third Member Swap.

Hello,

As the title says, I replaced my third member due to a failure with a replacement with the same gear ratio and also replaced the carrier bearing and a single u-joint.

Now I have developed axle wrap and dont understand why, any ideas or recommendations on how to mitigate it?

Added information: OME nitros and HD Dakar leafs.

Thanks for your help!

 

What are the symptoms?

 

Clunking noise coming from rear of truck under hard acceleration only, no other times, not when turning, or light acceleration.

 

Was the replacement 3rd member new or used?

 

Hard acceleration is the key word here. Imo the issue is gonna be in the 3rd member or the u joint that was replaced. Only try way to help eliminate axle wrap is with some form of ladder bar.

 

Brand new, built by ECGS.

 

Ok. We can eliminate the 3rd member.

 

Yeah, boggles me why it would develop with a new carrier bearing, third member and U joint would think it would have occurred before I replaced all those versus after.

 

Perhaps the old 3rd member was masking issues and slop that the new one now is not? It happens all the time on vehicles that roll through my shop. We fix one thing and the new condition of whatever it was we repaired exacerbates the impending issues elsewhere which now must be fixed.

A track bar for sure would be the 100% solution here. Or SUA, or both.

 

Did you grease the new u-joint?

 

Yeah greased it all up on the bench when I replaced the u joint.

 

Maybe a lighter foot, i mean you blew the first one up in six years. I’ve owned 4 Toyota’s 3 Tacoma’s of the four and have yet to destroy a 3rd member.

 

Third member or rear diff on Tacomas basically self destructs if you tow close to the max of 6500 as the crush sleeve is not designed for that - mine went and the rear wheel bearings all at 100k plus front wheel bearings. Also a known problem is the Tacoma driveline geometry is a mess and randomly owners have vibration/clunks/failures - forum is full of this. Even Tom Woods (driveshafts) says it and site states that fact as even with a 1 piece driveshaft all problems may not be solved. Fact and Toyota knows it and does not really care as we all know (new Tacomas have the same crappy setup while 4Runners don't).

Your Dakars should have stopped the axle wrap but that the 2 piece shaft geometry may be off - lots of site posts on that.
I got a 1 piece shaft that fixed my problems but may not for all as stated above.

For all owners that have never had this problem I am glad for you as its a pain in the ass and no real or easy Toyota dealer help.
You are on your own (cost wise too). Like my truck but Toyota corporation not so much and I can't type my real comment on them.
The dealers hands are tied by corporate and lots of good dealers but...………….

 

How again are you sure it's axle wrap? So many other things can make a clunk.

 

Could be the slip yoke in the drive shaft?

 

How is that the crush sleeves fault? You can get a solid spacer instead if worried but again, not sure what you’re talking about there

 

Perhaps, I am sure the 35s, extra weight and offroading contributed in some fashion to the failure but I am not building it to be a pavement princesses either and some abuse is to be expected.

Through deduction, I pulled the third member and inspected it, looked at the axles, inspected the brakes, and not to mention the behavior is indicative of axle wrap.

I have not considered this, I did mess with the slip yoke when it was on the bench but never took it off as I did not want to mess with the boot, are you suggesting perhaps rounded splines?

Which is what I did when I had them build it out, that and 4.88s.

 

Rounded splines would be quite extreme. The grease under the boot wears out and makes the yoke bind. It’s super thick moly stuff so get some of that, take off the clamp and relube but be careful with the boot because you can’t find it separately. Then refasten with a hose clamp.