help!! this is driving me really insane!

just curious, why would the dealer tell me that you have to replace the driveshaft when you do the u-joints. Tech said I couldn't do just the u-joints. They wanted $490 just in labor.

 

the dealer is straight raping you, the part is 16$

 

thanks for the confirmation on that.
I'll most likely just get the u-joints from rockauto.com and do it myself. $54 for all 3 joints including shipping. I only called the dealer to see if it might be worth letting them do it. Had expected a little fondling from the dealer but not gang raped and left unconscious in a ditch.

 

Finally got time to work on this today.
My squeeks/rattles seem to be fixed now. Only drove a few miles and only got up to maybe 50 mph. Replaced the center bearing (~$200 from dealer) and all 3 u-joints (~$20 each from O'Reilly).

After removing the driveshaft, I noticed that I could barely move the rear joint by hand. Then I couldn't get any of them to press out on my bench vice. Took the shaft to a local shop and for $50 they removed the old joints and center bearing and put the new ones on for me. They said some parts had seriously seized in and were tough to get out.

The new center bearing doesn't seem to have any less play than the old one to me but I can't return it now and with 105000 miles, it was likely a good idea to do it all anyway. Hopefully it's good for another 100k miles now.


A question regarding grease fittings:
My new u-joints have a small grease fitting that requires a needle adaptor on the grease gun but when I use the needle, the grease just come back out of the fitting around the needle. Are fittings like this typically so annoying to use?

I ended up just taking those needle fittings out, putting a rubber nozzle adaptor on the grease gun, and pressing that against the hole to get grease into the u-joints. That worked pretty well. I guess I'm basically using the fittings as plugs now.

 

I had got a needle adapter front tractor supply that worked great for me...
Until I lost it. After that I just swapped them out for normal fittings

 

this could make the job easier and you may even be able to get it from autozone from their loan a tool selection.