Thanks very much to "Old Timer" and "Powerstroke73" for taking the time to reply to my last post. Very helpful.

I decided to go ahead and replace both ball joints, and the U-joint between the two shaft assemblies. Everything has been going pretty smoothly, until I tried to take the spindle off. THe Haynes book says to "tap it with a plastic mallet" and it will come off.

I dunno what kind of plastic mallet he has, but the spindle is not budging no matter what I do. I almost soiled myself trying to pull that damn thing off. I took the nuts off, and I cant see anything else holding it on, but no amount of tapping, pulling, or anything else will move it at all. I dont see anywhere I could put a puller or a slide hammer either.

Anyone got any ideas?

Patrick S.

(1990 F 150 4x4, Dana 44 IFS)

 

The spindles are usually a PITA to take off. They usually stick to the knuckle and require a fair bit to take off. On my Dana 28 I was lucky and they were lose, but on others I've worked on they can be hard. Once you have the outers pulled off there shouldn't be anything else holding it on.You shouldn't be able to pull the shafts as those are partially retained by the spindle. On a Dana 44 you should be able to turn the knuckle and everything far enough top the side that you might be able to hit it off from the rear. You will see the spindle on in the hole of the knuckle, but be very careful hitting it off from the rear as you can mushroom that ring causing the spindle to be even harder to get off. If you don't want to do that do like they say and use a rubber or plastic mallet to hit it off. Don't use a metal hammer by any means since that will ruin the threads and mar the surface. When you use the plastic mallet be careful as you can bend the spindle if you're not careful too. Its kind of one of those catch 22s. You have to hit hard enough to hit it off (which sometimes is pretty damned hard) but you can't hit so hard as to risk bending the spindle. For the most part you can hit on them pretty hard, but I have bent one before doing that. Once you get it broke loose a little bit with the hammer use a chisel or a pry bar and put it between the knuckle and the spindle and work your way around it and it should come off.

 

I forgot to mention, you can't use a puller or anything on it as you don't want it to bind on the way off, and a slide hammer is a bad idea too.

As far as replacing the u-joints which ones were you talking about? The one on the short side shaft or the 2 on the long side shaft? Like I said since you'll basically have the axle all torn down you might as well check all the u-joints and unless they're in new condition replace them. They shouldn't have any slop in them at all. One thing you might want to consider is if you have c-clips on the long side slip yoke shaft that goes into the diff think about getting a c-clip eliminator for that. If you have that in the future if you ever have to pull that shaft again you don't have to pull the diff to get it off. If you put a c-clip eliminator on make sure that you have the cap on the slip yoke shaft welded in so it won't pop out. I've seen 2 Dana 35 axles fail from this. The first one munched his shaft, and the other one blew the top of his case apart.