rear driveshaft, advice plz

06 dbl cab ted sport 4x4. 121 k miles. Rear driveshaft sounds like a seagull. Dealer wants 800 bucks. It runs out. I can feel the play when I push up on it. Ok start.....

 

One piece replacement sounds like the way to go.

 

You sure it's not your u joints?

 

What do you mean by it runs out? Were is the play middle, closer to the transfer, or closer to the rear diff?

 

Runs out means, if you were to put an indicator on it it would show a wobble. not concentric. I got under it, blocked up in neutral, and found no play in the front or rear u-joint. As I rotated either wheel, I could hear a screech that would come and go. When moving from a stop slowly it goes rip, rip, rip, till it quietes down at speed. Then it vibrates at 50 plus MPH. Anyway as I said, If you push up in the middle of the shaft, I can feel the inside front yoke move inside the rear yoke, not where it goes in by the rubber boot, but more towards the middle inside. I dont have the cakes to buy an expensive setup. Since I have access to redneck eng. I may have to resort to such means. comment on plz.

 

Im going to see if there is any play in mine, cant say I have ever noticed any or not with any drive shaft.

 

I have a single piece DS with the same play in slip yoke. I recently greased it using a Teflon grease, but it only fixed the vibes and noise for about 100 miles or so. I have helper springs, but no lift, so I'm not sure that shims would help or hurt. Was looking into driveshaft spacers to push the yoke together a bit more, but I'm afraid of "bottoming out" yoke joint and destroying my pinion bearing, diff, or transmission. The helper springs raise the back end about half to a full inch, but the vibes and grinding were there before they were installed.

 

Replace your u-joints, all of them. A ball joint press rental from autozone will help get them out. Make sure you match mark the ends so you reinstall them in the EXACT orientation they came out, or you'll have a bad vibe.

Greasing them might change the pitch of the noise, or make it go away(for a short time). This would be a good diagnostic tool to prove it is the u-joints. Odds are, if they are originial, they're bad. That noise indicates brinelling of the pins inside the u-joint due to no lube.

DO NOT WAIT to install them. It won't take long for the u-joint to fail once brinelling starts.

 

OK. Just to let you know....I greased everything about three weeks ago. [tranny to pinion on differential] still made squeak. So I have to drive it another week. No days off till then. I will attempt to do the U-joints next weekend. Thanks for the logic. Will post up with results

 

per Skytower, I removed the driveshaft to begin changing all 3 u-joints. The rearmost one was siezed. Found the squeak. Derp on my part. It didn't occur to me that the u-joint could be toast and still have no play. Inside one of the caps was dust. The other 3 were fine. A big THANK YOU to SKYTOWER! This site rocks! Now all I have to do is figure out how to rep skytower.

 

Look under his name at the bottom of the post and there are three icons. The furthest left one is for repping. It is silver in color, to its right is the blue "quick pm" button and to its right is the red "report post" button

 

click on the lil lower left icon under his name thingy

 

Just look at all the TW love here

 

Hopefully it didn't stress the ears where the u-joints ride. You didn't find any stress cracks or deformation, right?

 

Also, did this help cure your vibrations at all?

I have the typical starting and ~50mph drive line vibration. 78k on the truck with original ujoints. I grease them. Have shimmed the axle to be on 0 with the transfercase, made it worse. So confused.

 

The overall angles from trans to diff should be split through the whole driveline. Two part driveshaft will require shims at the carrier bearing. Measure all parts of the driveshaft with an angle finder to check.

 

So your saying if the front shaft angle is 5 degrees off the trans, the back half should be 10 degrees off essentially?

 

sorry for the late reply guys... no vibrations. also no scrambled yoke. also no shims under the carrier bearing. OK for those of you that are familiar with yer geometry, my .02 of course. the amount of angle that you are going to change both driveshafts {with shims} is going to be very small. some would say what if I shim it 2 inches? OK, that is a big change. for the sake of argument you are correct that shims will change the angle. However, u-joints being what they are, they are not rotating at a constant speed, and the amount of angle dangle you change them is being like a squarehead, straightening all the pictures in a room. Oh snap, I'm a squarehead. Enlighten me if I am TOTALLY mistaken.....