Lubrication points under chassis?

Maybe 2020 was the end of zerks year?

 

2021, no zerks

 

Wow

 

Yea, i keep telling myself i must be blind or something. i just cant imagine not one

 

This is what it would look like if you had it:

 

None on my 2020. Owner's manual still shows them as a maintenance item to lube them. You know stealerships are charging people for the work anyway. Has anyone who knows they don't have them and uses the stealership for maintenance (0.0001% of this forum) seeing lubing of prop shafts showing up on the paperwork? If so, gotta question any other maintenance they charge you for.

 

i don't understand why the manual says to lube them if they don't exist

 

Same here on my 2020 with no zerks.

 

Late 2017 has 2 on front shaft, 0 on the rear.

 

Dealership guys usually don't grease them even when they're present. Big argument about that and failure to check diffs/txcase on my end with bad results.......

 

That sucks. That’s why I was crawling under truck looking for them. I don’t like depending on others to do fairly easy yet often neglected maintenance.

I have a Jeep CJ7 that has zerks everywhere. Couple that with a slow oil leak and everything under it stays nice and lubed up and rust free!

 

The 2016's have a combination of 5 zirks (early 2016, on driveshaft), 3 on driveshaft late 2016, and some later 2016 even zero, so sealed using sealed ujoints.

Mine is early 2016, 5 zerks. I grease them myself, I do not trust Toyota to do that since the ones after 2016 have no zerks. Note the last point, it might vary year to year. I have not researched every model year.

Bought my truck used, and when I got it there was very little grease in the u-joints despite it being first serviced by the Toyota dealer. Don't trust that, just grease them yourself until the clean stuff comes out. Works for me for the 4 different 4x4's I have owned the last 35 years.

My truck is off-road at least 30 times per year, about 3,000 or more off-road miles each year and that is in some pretty harsh remote conditions in BC. I am still on my original u-joints, at 51,000 miles now. I grease them about every 3 months. My off-road driving is mud, horrible washboard roads, roads with thousands of foot deep potholes, and no end of ATV trails and rock climbing like in the pic. Four 4x4's used heavily for off-road, and no lift on any of them. Just slow and easy and measure your routes.

I have needed to replace front inner bearings, cv axles, and hub assemblies due to the hard roads. The driver side needle bearing tends to fail pretty early on the 3rd gen Taco if you off-road a lot. Mine had over 1/2 inch of play up and down at the front diff when the needle bearing went. Front end wobbled like a drunkard. There is also a more permanent fix for that issue, you can find it here on Tacomaworld.

I have not greased anything else on my truck, with the exception of the rear leaf springs. During off-road use they get pretty baked in sand and mud and squeak like crazy. There are permanent solutions for that also on TAcomaworld, but I just power spray them off and blast a little WD-40 in between the leafs and the brackets. Works like a charm plus every trip is so harsh that I have my truck up on ramps in my garage inspecting for damage anyway. Simple to clean the leaf springs at that point and grease the u-joints.

 

@ppat4 Where are these five zerks? And what grease should I use?

 

Here you go - https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/check-your-u-joints.409042/

 

@ppat4 Thanks, I appreciate it.