Just wore out a rear u-joint @ 34k miles Anyone else having problems?

 

45k on mine, no problems yet


<-knocking on wood!

 

Yep I had one go out at about the same mileage as you, now I have 41k or so and am waiting for another to go bad.

 

my center 1 seized at 28k miles

 

how do you know when you have got a bad one......? i guess what i mean is how do you know which one it bad?

 

There will be excessive play in the shaft...

 

I just went and picked my truck up about an hour ago. They replaced the two u-joints on the rear shaft and the sway bar links. The u joints were siezing, the whole rear of the truck was shuddering, and they also were squeaking. The sway bar links had bad bushings, and rattled as I was going over small bumps. All this and only 26,000 miles of babying. It's not from abuse.

 

I just did my whole front end at 65k, haven't done the rears yet. <---knocking on wood

 

I've had two go out. One was at 23K and one a week ago at 65k. First they squeak for awhile, then they start siezing up and shuddering. While they are very stout u joints, they are flawed because they are not greasable. Aftermarket ones are available with a zerk in it. I've been putting the greaseable one's in instead. We'll see if that works better, I guess.

 

Mine was Ticking bad when taking off and letting off. Could not really notice by looking or just feeling. sounded like a reed was stuck on the driveshaft going round and round hiting the body

 

mine did not have excessive play, no play at all in fact. they were just VERY hot to the touch.

 

Seems to be pretty common with these trucks, I just did my first one last week at 72,000 kms. Headed out of town for a week or so at the lake and I can hear it ticking, I know what it's gonna be so I grab a spare and hope I can make the 10 hour drive without doing it on the side of the road. The last half hour or so it really starts to vibrate above 90km/h so I just limp it to camp, this is what I found;


Now would you look at that no wonder I had a little vibe! Turns out Dad had to have on changed on his 05 on the way out of town that weekend too, he has 115,000 very babied kms on a bone stock rig.

 

that's about what mine looked like.

 

Only one cap had any grease in it.

 

Just finished replacing all the rear U-joints yesterday...Spicer 5-160x...They are 5 thou too long so I sanded the caps for 30 seconds with 400grit and voila they are perfect. The Middle one was on the way out but it was intact and I doddled for a week with Smarty on 7....I was pumping the grease in but it never made it to one spindle ....that spindle was half gone and there were no bearings left in any of what was left of the caps and my yoke is a little smaller. Lucky I made it into the shop. Side of the road...been there done that.....in the rain...hammer, vise grips and socket set....wasn't pretty. My Spicers lasted 3 times as long as stock and twice as long as Precision. Stock would only last 30k or so.