After driving around with the clunking and thunking on my Toyota Offroad rig for quite a while, I've decided to stop putting it off and replace the u-joints in my rear driveshaft. The question is whether or not I should do it myself.

I found some decent write-ups online, and here's some info I managed to gather:

• If I have a vise that opens wide enough, it's an easy way to press out the bearings to remove the bearing caps. Otherwise, I can use a giant C-clamp, or last resort, a hammer!
• I also need somewhere fairly sturdy to do the pounding on
• Apparently you shouldn't just replace 1 u-joint in yout Toyota driveshaft at a time. If one is bad, it's put extra wear and tear on your other joint. If you replace the one, the other will probably be bad enough to replace in a short while, and then it will have caused the first one you replaced to have extra wear and tear putting you in a viscious cycle of replacing universal joints and spending money on your Offroad Toyota when you could be saving up for a dual transfer case setup!

And here are some pictorial writeups on how to do it yourself:

http://www.stu-offroad.com/axle/ujoint1/u-joint-1.htm

http://www.pirate4x4.com/tech/ujoint_install/

 

 

Tags: ujoint u-joint joint universal driveshaft 2009-05-27      0 Comments