In the near future I am having a 100k mile service done on my 97 F150 4x4. I am however going to change the u-joints myself to save on some money. How hard will it be?? How long should it take??

thanks

 

Get a Chilton or Haynes manual. It will tell you how to do it. It's not very hard, prolly take 2 hrs max. Handy to have a good size hammer, and a vise of some kind, like a bench vise.

 

mark the yoke in it,s relation (position) to the drive shaft

 

guys for the help/info. Looks like I'll buy a manual and do it myself.

 

It's not too bad to just remove the driveshaft and take it to a driveline shop. Take your own ujoints or buy from them. They can swap out the joints then you just reinstall the driveshaft. They usually don't charge very much, especially if you buy the ujoints from them. When i'm feeling lazy, that's what I do.

 

I have the Chilton book and it isn't very helpful in my mind. I have to replace the rear u-joint. It's chattering now and i can feel a vibration coming. Basically I am on borrowed time. I picked up a u-joint today, but I am stuck. I know I need to remove the snaprings. No one can provide me the tool in the Chilton's book "U-Joint Tool". I've been told to takea hammer to it. IOk, so where do I take a hammer to? The books refers to it as a double cardan assembly, but I can only see once U-joint in the rear.

I guess a big question is how to remove the driveshaft.... HELP!

 

Hi,
I had a transmission extension housing gasket leakage fixed a couple of weeks ago and they had to remove the driveshaft to install a new gasket.
So what they did was they unbolted four bolts on the rear housing that hold the driveshaft and pulled out the yoke Driveshaft comes out intact.
I did not expect that to be so simple

 

I decided to let the Ford Mechanics do the job so that I would not have any problems with vibrations/unbalanced drive shaft. Cost was $193.50!!!!!!!! I did not realized Ford charged $35 for one u-joint and there are 3 on the rear driveshaft! The mechanic said they have had no luck with aftermarket u-joints? Well, at least they are greasable....4 more grease fittings under the truck (3 ujoints, 1 on pitman arm)

 

hmmmm.....Ford makes a greasable u-joint I don't understand

 

There is just a regular grease zerk in the middle of the U-Joint to help keep in lubricated.