Now that the front end has been reworked I want to replace the "U" joints and carrier bearing. Any tricks or info on pitfalls will be greatly appreciated.
RGL
2000 F-250 7.3 2 wheel drive
You will not believe what I just finished doing not 20 minutes ago!!!
No sh*t, I just 5 minutes ago I got back from the test drive.
Things I learned:
Mark all the sections to ensure you put the drive shaft sections back together in the same orientation. If you don't, you may throw the balance off. I just used a can of spray paint at each u-joint.
There are two different sized carrier bearings. The difference is the ID of the bearing itself. Mine was the bigger of the two. Getting the carrier bearing yoke nut off was a biatch. According to the book, it's torqued to 300 ft/lbs. It'll take a big breaker bar with a 4' extension over the breaker bar just to break it loose. Luckily I have a 3/4" socket set. Getting the nut loose isn't the only hard part. You have to hold the drive shaft secure enough so it'll stay put when wrenching on the other end to the tune of 300+ ft/lbs. I removed the u-joint on the other end first, sticking a big assed chissel thru the yoke and jammed the chisel into the bench vise. Once I got that nut off, I used a punch to index the slip splines to ensure I put it back together the same way. The yoke came off with little effort. To get the bearing off, I cut the rubber bumper off leaving the bearing alone on the shaft. I have a flywheel/gear puller that worked to get the bearing off. The new bearing came with a shield to press on the the yoke. I cleaned the major rust off the yoke shaft and using a pvc pipe connector as a driver, pressed the the shield onto the yoke. The new bearing and bracket assembly slid onto the shaft and it pressed into place when I put that big assed nut back on. I torqued it to some insane value I guessed was in the ball park of 300 ft/lbs.
Getting the old u-joints out was fun. The bench vise wouldn't do it and I don't have a press.
To drive the u-joints out I used some of those 3/4" drive sockets and a big arsed mallet (blunt end of a wood splitting maul). I supported the side ears of the yoke with a couple of big sockets, and used a 3rd socket larger than the u-joint cap diameter to drive the caps out of the yoke with the help of my big mallet. I'd drive them as far as I could until the center cross was hitting the yoke, but the end caps still wouldn't come loose. I took a break and went back to it later. And then everything started coming loose.
When I went to the parts place, they looked the u-joints up by application. I got home and guess what? Yep, wrong ones. They gave me 2-0053 u-joints. The diameter of the caps was ok, but the width of the u-joint was short. So I went to the only place open after 6pm and got 3ea 2-0054BF u-joints from Advance at almost half the Car Quest price for the same part number.
The u-joint yokes needed a little cleanup in the bores. So I did some de-burring and de-rusting with a curved file. I also wanted to ensure the u-joint caps were fully greased. I removed them and added a little grease. I pushed them back onto the cross while turning them to sqeeze out any excess grease. Then I again removed the caps for installation. The first cap I pressed in was rather tight, so I greased up the outside of the remaining caps which seemed to help. The rest went in a bit easier.
The rest of the job was pretty uneventful. The noise I was hearing before was indeed a bad carrier bearing. It rolls much quieter now.
