Greasing Drive Shafts

[greentruck]

I grease with each oil change also. But haven't had to worry about 'over-greasing' the slip joint. My driveshafts will move a bit at a certain point of 'fill' but the seals around mine let any extra seep out when under compression. IF your seals do not...then it could be an issue.

I have over 300K on my rig (original U-Joints and driveshafts) and don't see any indication that I have been pounding the bearings in my T-case or Diffs.

Not saying it isn't possible...but I doubt it happens very often. SNIP

Actually, this happened the very first time I serviced my still nearly new FJ55 back in the day. I'd previously owned a '76 Subaru 4x4 Wagon, which IIRC even then mostly had sealed bearings, but which I may not have owned long enough to jack up to grease the driveshaft on (which may have had the only zerk on the thing.) Pumped that baby full of grease - if a little lube is good, more is probably better. Finished the service, headed to work and, oh, the bad vibes!

Fortunately, I had a pretty good mechanic brain trust around the break room table at work. IIRC, we pretty much figured it out, but I had to wait until I got up the next day to pull the zerk, which spewed grease. Problem resolved. Excellent, I hadn't trashed my new Land Cruiser! Because it sure seemed like it at the time.

Yeah, it might leak out, but could you really stand the irritation? Not if it was as full of it as mine was, which was hammering and surely would've done seals and bearings near either end of the DS no good.

I pump the gun until I see the very first motion of the slip yoke, then it's done. That's worked for me ever since that first tomfoolery.

 

[MidMan]

Thanks for sharing your knowledge + experiences.

But anyone have idea that which type of Grease should be pumped in drive shaft ?

NGLI-1 type

NGLI-2 type

NGLI-3 type

NGLI-GC LB type

 

[mudgudgeon]

Personally, I use lithium based moly grease.

But any multipurpose grease is going to do the job

 

[flintknapper]

Thanks for sharing your knowledge + experiences.

But anyone have idea that which type of Grease should be pumped in drive shaft ?

NGLI-1 type

NGLI-2 type

NGLI-3 type

NGLI-GC LB type

FSM (1997) specifies Lithium based NGLI-2

It also instructs to grease the U-Joints and drive-shaft until grease begins to appear at the seals. The only trouble with that is some seals at the spline joints will not allow excess grease to pass by before significantly elongating the drive-shaft. Mine will and I've never had any problems...but others have reported theirs will not.

In extreme circumstances it would be possible to 'hydraulic' your drive-shaft (which is intended to freely extend and compress). Extending the drive-shaft is of no consequence but if the D/S can't compress it would be 'possible' to shock load components of your T-case (primarily the housing extensions) and your differentials (pinion).

I'm not sure I buy into the idea that the 'bearings' in the T-Case would be affected...as you often read here, but maybe so.

 

[largeone]

This video is what happens to u-joints if not maintained. My friend never maintains his 80...brought it to my house the other day and said, “I have a clunking sound when I’m on the highway!” This is the closest I have ever seen to a total u-joint failure from lack of maintenance and ONLY 100% road driving, ZERO off reading.

All of his joints were dry as a bone. I ended up replacing the joints and keeping his old one as a trail spare.

 

[pawnthatdude]

This video is what happens. My friend never maintains his 80...brought it to my house the other day and said, “I have a clunking sound when I’m on the highway!” This is the closest I have ever seen to a total u-joint failure from lack of maintenance and ONLY 100% road driving, ZERO off reading.

All of his joints were dry as a bone. I ended up replacing the joints and keeping his old one as a trail spare.

I specifically said not u-joints but the driveshaft itself.

 

[jaymar]

Yep! The splines wear out and the yoke starts to wobble sideways and you get a hell of a vibration. It will smooth out when at highway sped, but as soon as you back out of the throttle, it vibrates hard, then straightens out again as it switches phase from acceleration to deceleration.

I've driven many old rear-wheel drive cars and pickups that have been neglected and worn out (poor farmers) and old Studebakers and Chevy trucks.

Many street-driven cars never have the problem with the slip yoke because they are sold or wrecked before it ever becomes an issue. But when you live on a gravel / dirt road, the dirt gets in there and wears it faster.

During the 80's, some manufacturers experimented with teflon spline coatings to eliminate the need for regular greasing. It worked for autos, but not trucks.

ALWAYS better to grease than NOT grease. Just make sure you do it with the driveline UNLOADED so the grease gets where it NEEDS to be instead of on the opposite side.

Do NOT over-grease it to act like a hydraulic ram because it WILL wreck bearings.

Can you define proper and overgreasing?

 

[largeone]

My apologies @pawnthatdude...edited my post. Thanks.

 

[rjsquire]

Overgreasing? I've read the forums here and I understand the idea of hydrolocking, however the very first reference I found on the matter of driveshaft spline greasing was this youtube video ( start at around 8:20 ):

The poster recognizes the debate on forums about the amount of grease to use, and cites the service manual which says to pump grease into the fittings until it begins to flow around the seal.

So, what's the right answer here? If oil can flow around the seal, won't that act as pressure relief for excess grease when the shaft compresses?

 

[mudgudgeon]

Overgreasing? I've read the forums here and I understand the idea of hydrolocking, however the very first reference I found on the matter of driveshaft spline greasing was this youtube video ( start at around 8:20 ):

The poster recognizes the debate on forums about the amount of grease to use, and cites the service manual which says to pump grease into the fittings until it begins to flow around the seal.

So, what's the right answer here? If oil can flow around the seal, won't that act as pressure relief for excess grease when the shaft compresses?

View attachment 2555455

For the uni joints, you want to pump in enough grease to push some of the old grease out. You can't over grease a uni joint, it just spews out, and spatters the underside of your floor.

For the splined slip joints, if you're doing regular maintenance. Two or three pumps is enough. Say each time you change your oil filter.

This reminds me, time to do mine.

As a newb landcruiser owner, I over greased tail shafts. I had a freeze plug pop out at the end of the yolk on one after pumping too much grease in.

 

[rjsquire]

For the uni joints, you want to pump in enough grease to push some of the old grease out. You can't over grease a uni joint, it just spews out, and spatters the underside of your floor.

For the splined slip joints, if you're doing regular maintenance. Two or three pumps is enough. Say each time you change your oil filter.

This reminds me, time to do mine.

As a newb landcruiser owner, I over greased tail shafts. I had a freeze plug pop out at the end of the yolk on one after pumping too much grease in.

Ahh! That freeze plug is not called out in the shop manual, but that certainly explains the huge gob of grease!
Is the solution to remove this shaft, disassemble the universal joint, and replace that plug? ( really hoping it can be done with the shaft in place )

 

[crow1969]

Just dropping in to say thanks to everyone for the good insight on getting everything greased up. It took 18 pumps on my rear slip joint to see any movement. I then pulled the zerk and the shaft promptly took a a nice green dump. After everything was greased up I kept the zerks for the slips off and drove around the hood aggressively hitting bumps. The attached pic was the result, the rear especially shot grease everywhere!

 

[yknot123]

Thanks for sharing your knowledge + experiences.

But anyone have idea that which type of Grease should be pumped in drive shaft ?

NGLI-1 type

NGLI-2 type

NGLI-3 type

NGLI-GC LB type

The owners manul will tell you all the grease types, oil types, tranny oil etc
Having 3 yotas at one time, I took a picture of the page on my phone when buying product.

 

[slock]

I am hoping to put this topic to rest - at least for me - and let my recent odyssey into the world of greasing driveshafts and why it is important give some fastidious owners some peace of mind when greasing their own drive shafts.

I have owned my 80 series for about a year. It has a 2 inch lift and is on 35’s. I had a mechanic check it over before a long trip this last summer. He did an inspection and hit the grease points. I took off on a cross country trip assuming everything was properly greased and it ran great the entire trip. I should add that I only bought this truck 2 years ago and had not had an opportunity to go over everything myself.

This is the important part. In the last month my 80 developed a slight clunk when starting from a stop. After some research in this forum and elsewhere I determined that a good place to begin to fix this clunk was with greasing the drive train. Makes sense that the slip yoke or u joints might bind up a little if they aren’t greased properly. I greased the u joints but I wanted to see how much grease was in the driveshaft. I pulled that apart and it was bone dry.

This is when I went down this rabbit hole of greasing driveshafts and the discrepancy between the service manual and on-line posters warning me of the dire consequences of over-greasing. So I took a measured approach and called in the experts. After calling five land cruiser specific repair shops on the east and west coast and two dealerships - all said to grease until grease begins to come out of the seal around the drive shaft.

At this point, I wanted to do an experiment. So I first just smeared a moly synthetic grease on the splines and put it all back together. This mostly fixed the clunk and I knew I was on the right track. Then I greased the shafts until they just barely moved. This fixed the clunk even better. Totally even.

After looking a bit more at the design of the slip yoke it hit me that the point of greasing at all is to get grease where metal touches metal. To do that I needed to follow the instructions in the service manual and the advice of seven experts who risk replacing a t-case if they mess it up by over-greasing. So I did what they said to do. I will add that after I fully greased the shafts I removed the zerks to release the built up pressure. Which as I write this it hits me that the positive pressure was likely considered by the Toyota engineers who designed this rig to last 25 years in a third world country and is necessary for proper lubrication but I digress.

I apologize for the length of this post but I am going wheeling this weekend and will report back if anything gets damaged due to too much grease.

 

[DivByZero]

I've also read far too much about this topic, and at the end, find myself totally undecided on which way I think makes the most sense here. It's times like this I ask myself one question: What would @OTRAMM do?

 

[slock]

I've also read far too much about this topic, and at the end, find myself totally undecided on which way I think makes the most sense here. It's times like this I ask myself one question: What would @OTRAMM do?

I don’t want to put him on the spot but I actually called his shop since I am near VA. The shop said grease until it comes out of the seal.

 

[greentruck]

There's undergreased, whcih can certainly bne a problem. Then there's the happy medium in between over and under greased. I tend to think it's somewhere short of coming out of the seal. It's at least where you start to see the shaft move, though. Then there's over-greased. It starts somewhere around where you see the seal spitting grease and can only get worse from there if you keep pumping.

You will, however, know when it's overgreased, because the hammering in the drivetrain will make that loud and clear. You can live with overgreased so long as it's short of that. Good service techs will get this right. But if it's not something you do all the time, it's far too easy to get quickly into hammering territory by overgreasing.

 

[baldilocks]

Lubing the slip joint is usually a once per year event on my rig so I remove the driveling and put it on the workbench. This way I can inspect, clean and lube and simultaneously remove all doubt. I run DC drivelines front and rear. With them removed inspecting and lubing the the DC center pin and it’s grease seal is much easier.

When the job is finished there are no doubts.

 

[OTRAMM]

I'm actually a don't grease the driveshaft slip joint more than a pump or so person. I've seen over greasing them kill t-case bearings. We've had trucks come in, that when you removed the zerk fitting the truck lowered down. There was enough grease pressurizing the slip joint to raise the truck. That kind of pressure can't be good on transfer cases and pinion bearings.

 

[clx16]

Sounds like a cheap lift to me!