Any harm with removing my front diff and driving around?

Thanks for the pic. Are you having any issues like that?

 

I just cut up one for a “get home” kit yesterday. On the outer joint, cut off the boot and clean up the grease. You’ll see the joint with the big balls. Position it so you can make two slices into the inner cage and remove one of the balls. Wiggle the joint around and continue doing this. After a few, there’s enough play you can pop out the balls without cutting. Once they’re all out, you can remove the whole joint. Minimal cutting.

 

Sweet you’re the man. Thanks for the info!!!

 

Like this. Happy to help.

 

No issues. Only issues a 4WD has converting to 2WD like that is making sure the stubs are in there and the nut is tight. The birfield w/nut on 4WD actually keeps the bearing assembly held together, if someone drives around without the bearing held together, either the bearing will be destroyed or you'll start to have excessive brake fade since the rotor is attached to the hub which is no longer held in place by the birfield w/ nut. The last guy I know tried to drive home without a CV was driving out of some mountains and had to stop when his brakes started to fade really bad headed down hill, he ended up calling a tow truck. I suspect with all the curves coming down the mountain and when its not held together the hub/rotor will try to wander outboard due to the vehicle weight and turning, then ends up pushing on the outer pad the whole time overheating the brake on that side.

 

Makes sense to me. Thanks a lot for the info

 

I've never taken apart Taco CVs, but I have done front wheel drive cars. There's 2 or 3 varieties. When you take the boot off, some have a snap ring that you can see. I don't remember if you compress it or spread it. Some CVs have a snap ring similar to the inboard CV. To get those apart, you clamp the shaft in the vice, hold the stub with a rag wrapped around the splines, and bang on the CV housing with a large hammer to get it to pop the inner race past the snap ring. If neither of those methods work, sometimes you can bend the CV as far as it will go and pry a ball out with a screwdriver. Then turn it and pop the other balls out 1 at a time.

 

Here is 1 method of getting it apart. Fast forward to 19 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1121&v=bAuoWxmSgo0&feature=emb_logo

 

I tried that half hearted yesterday and man it was not working for me. I threw it at the ground and after 4-5 attempts and chipping the concrete, I stopped lol

 

I've tried the pipe drop method several times and it's only worked once, the birfield side snap rings are strong and have a tight tolerance. Also using a steel pipe like the video was using is likely going to cause some damage somewhere, might be superficial or might be enough to cause problems if it's not caught and cleaned up before reassembly. Smashing something steel onto something else steel that you want to keep in good condition isn't good practice, aluminum or PVC is a better alternative.

AFAIK all LT Fab shops recommend disassembling the same way, which is similar to what the guy in the video ended up doing, but instead of cutting the cage, you cut the shaft off as close to the cage as possible, with the shaft out of the way the star can pivot far enough to extract the balls. What gets cut depends on what someone needs to reuse.