Driveline Suggestions?

My truck is making a noise from the rear end and is the most noticeable when coasting/decelerating while the truck is in gear. It sounded like a diff issue, so when I had my tires balanced and rotated last week, I had the guy at Tireworks check it out. I watched him the whole time. He had another guy put it in gear while it was on a lift, and he took a stethoscope and started searching. To make a long story short, he said it was the pinion bearing.

Fast forward to today, we disconnected my driveshaft to see if that pinion nut had backed itself out a little bit and here's what it looked like:
Seems pretty normal, I dont even see a way to adjust this thing! That is penetrating oil you see, not a leak. So now onto the rest of the drivetrain... the carrier bearing needs to be replaced and the driveshaft has the double-cardan style u-joints, which seem a little tight, but there is no grinding from what I could tell. Basically what I'm asking is: what would you do in this situation? Rebuild 3rd member? New driveshaft? Rebuild u-joints? I'm just looking for ideas. Thank you all, as always.

 

Very common issue. Rebuilt the third with new master bearing kit but also consider ECGS as it may be cheaper vs buying the kit/having a shop rebuilt unless you can do it yourself. As for the DS, I wouldn’t change the ujoints but would grease all of them.

 

I took my rear driveshaft to a place that specializes in rebuilding them. They told me a few options. They said for almost $2000 or close that I could have them build me a custom one for my 1st gen. That would be the whole thing with center bushing or - they mentioned a company called A-premium that they have had good luck with in the past on other customers rigs. I bought a complete rear driveline with center support bearing from them. I am lifted 3" and have taken numerous road trips and it's still functioning fine and has no issues, no vibrations etc. It was under $500 for this driveline. I have put about 30K miles on it so far. Not OEM but it saved me some serious money at the time. The custom driveline shop one would of been hands done better but I can't complain about the one I bought at all.

I thought it was my pinion bearing as well but the driveline shop was able to rule that out and it came down to the splines in the slip joint were just worn out on my OEM one. Probably from being lifted for so long. I'd want to know exactly what it was before throwing money at it though. If it's a rear end problem I'd just source a used 3rd member. Drop your out and put the new one in.

 

Next to last picture says alot, that zerk fitting hasn’t seen the business end of a grease gun in some time, also no scatter field above ujoints, its been said that the drive shaft does all the work and gets none of the attention, wonder if the diff oil got changed on a regular basis. Grab that flange on the diff and check for axial play, see if it has any in-out movement, if it does time for a rebuild, when they get real bad it sounds like a turbo spooling down on trailing throttle. I have a really long story about chasing a vibe in a freshly overhauled diff, not going to get into it here, the diff is real easy to remove and reinstall done it many times, installing a new ring and pinion requires an experienced skill set. IMO nothing beats a factory diff, so a salvage yard diff from a low (150,000) milage 1st gen tundra, tacoma or t100 would be the way to go, i think i paid $600. and got complete rear end.

 

Okay. I didn't realize that this is a common issue.
I will look into this some more. Also, if I end up keeping my oe driveshaft, does anyone have a recommendation for a new carrier bearing? Should I stick with oem? Thanks in advance!