04.5 Front U Joint
 

Hey guys what all do I have to take off to get the front u joing out to replace it. My front left is out. It seams to me everyone is saying take rotor, hub, and spindle off. Just want to make sure before I start tearing into this thanks.

Help! Anyone?

i just did mine yesterday, if its the stock u joint then i hear you are supposed to heat it up cause they use some sort of glue but if not a punch works.

when you have the wheel off, take your brakes off i use a 5 gallon bucket upside down to put my caliper on, and then pull off the rotor and take off your ABS sensor off the hub. once you have all that off you see the axle nut which is about 40mm(not sure?) and it is torqued to 185ft lbs. its not worth it to take it off, i remove the 4 bolts on the back side and pull the whole hub and axle assembly straight out. note to keep your axle spline clean.(i usually keep a rag on it) place your shaft on a vice i didnt have one in my garage and just used the concrete floor but will be a PITA to hold still.

once you have the whole shaft assembly off take the clips out of the u joint. they will be on the in side. once they are off if you dont have a press your gonna use a lot of brute force. we went through about 2-3 punchs knocking it out. (hitting from the inside knocked the bearing caps out). once you get one out its pretty self explanitory. putting the new u joint in is really easy, just make sure you have a good metal working hammer with a flat head to put the new u joint bearing caps back in. and re assemble.

I though the u joints were on the driveshaft? Whats all this talk about removing the wheels?

there are u joints in the front axle so the wheels can turn...

you should have said drive shaft. and there is only one front drive shaft? what is left about it? removing u joints is almost a universal process anyways...