IPDiesel

I spent the later hours of yesterday changing my ujoint on the drivers front side. Heard some clicking over the past couple weeks & figured it was a u joint.

I spent lots of time researching how to remove the front bearing-and it sure was a good thing that more people have done this-or I would have been lost.

Using the power steering to jack the bolts out was a great idea-Good job to who ever thought about it first.

I bent two 1/2" drive extensions doing it and mauled a couple sockets in the process. My axle housing has a couple good dents / nicks in it from where the sockets pressed against it.

Its an unimaginable amount of force that was required to get it out. It took me about 1.5hrs to jack the bearing out. Most of which was spent with no progress happening to the bearing. I figured I was going to have to reassemble it all & take it to the mechanics-cause there was zero progress in moving the bearing.

As a last ditch effort, i put a little bit of heat to the housing-not too much but it was the right thing to do. After a little heat ( I could still touch the metal ) the bearing finally cracked loose. ( with a bang I might add. I had my head in the wheel well looking for progress as my wife held the steering wheel cranked. I thought I was a gonner. sounded like a gunshot under there, even over the rattle of the engine.)

There was a crazy amount of rust between the housing & bearing. No wonder it was stuck.

After that was done with, the whole dis-assembly of the u joint was simple. & reassembly was a breeze.

My concern was after I pulled out the old u joint, I didn't notice any busted needles or other catastrophic damage to the bearing surfaces. One of the cups & bearing surface was discolored-and looked as though there had been some water in the grease ( odd color & a little bit of foam ).

I hope that the clicking i was hearing was from the u joint & not the bearing on that side. I don't really want to have to buy new ones.

Has anyone had similar circumstances when it came to failing u joints?

Oh, and one final thing I would like to add-for any who are going to try it:
If you don't have to change out the bearing, you don't have to remove the axle nut. I did mine with the wheels on the ground-but it was not required. It would have saved me a lot of time not having to break that nut loose. All of the help topics on the subject all say to remove the nut.

Nascarcamper

I did not have clicking, I had/have (still do) clunking, thought I had wheel bearing, u-joint and ball joint issues, actually all were not that bad, ball joints did have movement and we all know they need to be changed so I did. The clunking I found is the caliper mount, seems the brake pads have worn thought the stainless guides and have actually created some pretty big groves in the caliper mount. Rock Auto sells them, about $16.15, will order next week.