Hey guys this is my first post, any help would be great. Yesterday on the coldest day of the year the center bearing bracket that holds the driveshaft in place broke. The truck is an 05 with 74k miles on it. I called the service dept. and they had never heard of this.

I previously noticed a slight vibration but nothing recently. Ford parts dept. told me I need a whole new driveshaft, I guess you cant buy just the bearing and bracket. I have the U shaped piece of bracket that broke off. I'm thinking of doing some redneck engineering and welding it back on and maybe bracing it somehow. Since it is so cold I have not crawled under and checked out if it would be possible. Any experience with this? Should I give the welding a try or just buy a driveshaft?
Thanks, Jake

 

You could try to fix it but after welding it back on you would need to have it rebalanced, that cost me about 50 bucks. Whole new drive shafts front and rear cost me about 500. That was for a brand new front and rear driveshaft, ujoints, paint and balancing plus labor to uninstall/install. Id suggest whole new driveshafts if you have a shop around its alot less hassle

 

Thanks for the reply. Sorry if I didn't make this clear before. I don't plan on welding the driveshaft it is the bracket that bascially holds the driveshaft in place and to the frame. Thanks!

 

is it a two piece driveshaft?

 

He is talking about the center support bearing...

 

so it is a two piece... Well i cant be of much help there since ive only seen them but never messed with one. Id still recommend going with one solid driveshaft if at all possible. I would think you could weld that right back on though with little problem if you got it aligned rigt.

 

I wouldn't suggest running it since it could've been damaged. I've seen driveshafts suddenly blow up... literally while going down at normal highway speed. In fact, when my dad was a lot younger he had a Mercury that decided to lose it's driveshaft. Not fun!

If I were you, go to a junk yard that has a few wrecked F150s and take one... IIRC they are pretty much universal... as in any Ford support bearing is good for most applications.

OR, you can do like what FX4Life said... go to a 1 piecer... I've been thinking about doing that to my truck... but I really don't care at this point. I do like how 1 piece driveshafts are easier to service though.

Just ensure when you take it off, to mark exactly how you took it off and ensure you put it back on EXACTLY the same... or else you will get a bad vibration because driveshafts are balanced! You can see weights stuck on them. If you don't follow that, you will wreck your rear end and/or transmission... or worse -- you will lose your driveshaft!

 

ahh, i did not think about it being damaged. I thought he ment it just fell off while it was parked or something.

 

Thanks for the input. I'm gonna take a look at it tomorrow and decide what to do. I may just end up going to a junkyard like you said.

The bracket broke off when I was driving about 40mph, so hopefully it didn't screw anything up.

 

If it were me I would take it to a drive shaft shop and have them examine it. You should check it for trueness, have the U-joints checked/replaced, have the center bearing checked/replaced and the whole thing balanced. If you can figure out how the center cap became damaged, a rock hit it, there was a manufacturing defect or something, you could just replace the cap, but it seems like a good excuse to upgrade to me.

 

^^^Best answer!^^^

If you do upgrade... I'd go with a Spicer center bearing and Spicer HD U-Joints...