Greasing Slip Joint / Boot?

Alright, I'm getting ready to grease the slip joint on my '13 DCSB 4x4. Through searching the site, I've found that the Driveshaft has to be dropped.

Simple enough, but what are you guys doing about the boot that's crimped on?

 

I carefully undid the clamp so I could reuse it. I was afraid of putting a hose clamp on because I didnt want the driveshaft to be unbalanced. That was 50,000 miles ago and it's still holding.

 

Make sure you mark it before you separate so you can line it back up.

As far as the clamps, either get the same sized oetiker clamp. Or use a zip tie.


Also while you are there can you do me a favor and see if you can put the slipjoint together at 90* rotation from where you took it apart. I wanna play with driveshaft phasing.

 

Hey, thanks guys. I knew about marking it first, but thanks for looking out.

 

No prob. I'll check it out for you.

 

You can use a hose clamp to hold it and you will not have a balancing problem if you use two hose clamps the same size and position them 180 degrees out from each other.

Use a zip tie that weighs almost nothing and you won't have an issue either.

 

Alright, I just went the zip tie route. Maybe I'll see if I can find the correct clamps, but in assuming there is a tool that goes with them.

As far as turning it 90*, it doesn't seem to want to go.

The female side is indexed. You can see where it looks like there's a spline missing on the bottom:


The splines on the male side all appear to be the same. However, if I tried to slide it together any other way than with the yellow mark on the male side matching up with the index on the female side, it wouldn't go. You can see in the pic, that it started to chip the rubber coating off by trying to force it a little. That's when I gave up.


I would've been done sooner, but I had to source this specialty wrench holding tool:

 

I was wondering how to grease that. Nice wrench holding tool.

 

Make sure you use the right grease. Has to be teflon to work properly.

 

Would it be possible to just undo a clamp and spray some aerosol based teflon inside?

 

Terrific. I used Red & Tacky...

 

It's better than nothing!
I would not lose any sleep over it.

 

Ha! I guess.

 

That joint is pretty tight tolerances , spray lube will not penetrate far enough to be effective . When I get time in the spring , mine's getting a damned zerk installed...
Sarge

 

Fyi you should be able to drop the center carrier bearing to pull the slip joint apart rather than unbolting the driveshaft from the pinion.

and thanks for seeing if you can rotate it. It doesn't look like the teeth on the male side are spread apart any differently which strikes me as odd why it can't be put together differently. But then why would they have that indexing gap on the female. Who knows!

 

You're right. Maybe I just couldn't get it? Although, it slid right back in the original position.

 

That shaft is master splined for a reason . Usually to keep guys from accidently re-assembling the driveshaft out of phase

 

^^^ This. Most of the time when one gets installed out of phase it leads to massive vibration and binding problems.

 

That's not what Spicer recommends for their Glidecoat slip splines, which these are.

Recommended Lubricants for Slip Assemblies










Always use a good E.P. grease, meeting N.L.G.I. Grade 2 specifications, on Glidecoat™ and steel splines. The same lubricant used for universal joint kits is satisfactory for slip assemblies.


From the last page of:
http://www2.dana.com/pdf/J3299-2-DSSP.PDF

 

damnit..... i wanna rotate the phasing 90* to have a proper driveline setup.