Front Driveshaft R/R (sort of)
Dec 31st, 2009 by C. Alexander Leigh
I was thrilled to discover that there’s a new Harbor Freight on 20th in Bellevue, right near where I used to live and only a few minutes from where I live now. Much better then having to drive down to Kent to buy cheap & dangerous tools.
I was just as happy to discover that they had the seperator kit that I had read so much about. I’d be needing it to rebuild my front drive shaft which has exhibited “angry sparrow” syndrome for the last thousand miles or so, indicating that one or more U-Joints and maybe the ball centering assembly are shot. AFAIK these are all stock from the factory, never serviced, and there’s 110K on the odometer now so this isn’t much of a surprise.
There are some repairs I find myself happy to do, even if they suck, because I tell myself that later I won’t be surprised when I have to do the same thing in the middle of the woods sometime. Dropping the front shaft turned out to be one of those things. For starters, I had always dreamed that you could get a socket on the strap bolts (and I’ve heard people have managed this with the right magical combination of extensions and angle joints) but the reality is better suited to a 8mm gear wrench or box-end.
I also thought the driveshaft would come off. Nobody mentions actually removing the shaft once the straps are off, because everyones drive shaft comes off, but mine. The U-Joints are welded onto the knuckles with rust, so its firmly on there even though its completely disconnected. Maybe driving it would fix that, ha ha. Seriously by this point the dry spot under the jeep had gone away and I was completely soaked and freezing, so I called it and I’ll pry it off as soon as it dries out.
Anyways these are the surprises much better had in the driveway, not on the trail, so now I have half a mind to drop the rear shaft too just to do it and de-rust it. In “happy” surprises I also noticed today the steering gear is leaking, so it will need to be replaced as well. The good news there I guess is that the one I did in the Disco was $450 and OEM rebuilds for the TJ are $140.