I have had quite a bit of trouble with stuffing the carrier bearing out of it's housing, and this last time I found that the rear slipshaft was bound up. Had to knock it apart with a dead blow.

The plastic coating on the male splines had seperated and jammed things up. It looks like powder coating of some sort, and I have had enough and removed it all and put in a zerk. It makes the d/s a little sloppy but I can live with that if it means I don't have to deal with mashing the carrier bearing out again.

So my question is does this sound familiar to anyone? When I first had problems with it, I did plenty of searching and found nothing similar. Do I have some one-off driveshaft?

 

This is standard practice with slip joints. The plastic is to quiet the coupling. If you do not have it you will have slop in the coupling that will eventually wear on both sides of the coupling to the point it needs to be replaced. It may also cause a drive-line vibration.

Chris

 

Thanks. I thought maybe I got cursed with some oddball.

I'm not too worried about the splines being loose. I was about ready to replace them with tractor splines (cat1) which are nice and tight without plastic. Maybe high miles, high torque and liberal application of the stupid pedal just took it's toll.