How I grease my front driveshaft (1 Viewer)

[bloc]

I've seen a few threads asking for advice on getting the front driveline lubed, and even a couple asking whether there are even zerks up there. Had to do my drivelines recently and figured I'd take some pictures of what I do.

First off.. the equipment. No fancy grease gun or nozzle here. Just a standard 90 degree straight gun and tip. If the tip were much bigger we'd have problems, but this seems to just work for my rig.

Now, how I go about getting the shaft lined up perfectly. There is a VERY narrow range of orientation that allows access to the zerks. Moving the truck back and forth to accomplish this is.. very difficult. And unfortunately I don't have a 2-post car lift (dream garage stuff right there).

So.. I do the following.
Put the truck on ramps on alternating corners on flat ground (could go without this step, but it gives more room to work under the truck)
Chock behind the rear wheel on the ground
Parking brake set
Transmission in Neutral
Using a jack that will grip the bottom of the arm, put it as far out as possible without hitting the tire and slightly jack the front wheel off the ground until the tire just clears.

With this wheel off the ground and the transmission in neutral, and the center diff not directly coupling the front driveline to the rear, the front tire and front driveline are allowed to spin. This lets you easily and quickly make fine adjustments to get the driveline exactly where you need it.

If you jack from the arm, it is very important that you use a floor jack that has a good edge on it to grip the bottom of the arm. There are some welds for the sway-bar bracket that provide a purchase point. It will not hurt it. But bottle type jacks with a round top (like the OEM jack) won't stay put.

You could jack from the frame.. but with the suspension sag it'll have to go way up, and require jack stands since it can move so much with you under it.

Note that this works very well for the rear shaft too, only you'll have to chock the front wheel on the ground (at least) and disengage the parking brake. I then jack under the lower arm bracket on the axle.

Remove your plastic under-engine cover, and the transmission skid, and proceed

 

[bloc]

The center zerk is easy enough to get to. I won't spend any time on that.

The front zerk works the best for me when pointed directly to the passenger side of the vehicle. relatively easy to get to.

Now the tricky one. The rear zerk on the front shaft can be difficult. I also go directly to the passenger side, and don't need to remove the exhaust heat shield some people mess with.

There is perfect little spot to get it with the gun lying on the crossmember behind the transmission.

Do the same stuff you'd do with any driveshaft.. clean the zerk first (if you are new to this.. don't want to push dirt into the joint).

For the universal joints: pump grease in until you see fresh stuff coming out. Then I usually put on a medical glove and attempt to get as much grease out of the joint as I can to avoid it getting slung all over the bottom of the truck.

Center slip yoke zerk: DO NOT pump it totally full of grease, it can severely damage your transfer case.. there is some debate on amount, I use about 12 pumps.
Hope this helps.

 

[JZelnick]

A grease gun with a flexible hose makes a huge difference. I have one with Moly grease for my UCAs and slip yokes and one with Red N Tacky for the U joints. This is the gun I use:

Lincoln Lubrication 1134 Heavy Duty Pistol Grip Grease Gun with Whip Hose and Rigid Pipe Amazon product ASIN B0002NYDZ8

 

[bloc]

I actually found a non-hose gun easier as when you push on the gun the tip will snap directly on to the zerks.. no having to push on the hose itself near the nozzle. And once the shaft is oriented correctly the straight gun fits very easily.

Either way.. whatever works. This is just one option.

I also like the idea of using moly on the slip joints, but my spare moly gun is on the fritz so the Lucas Synthetic has been getting put in there too.

 

[pizdets17]

thanks for this, i just got the grease (red and tacky) and the gun last week. Going to tackle this for the first time this month

 

[pizdets17]

Do I fill the center and rear until grease stars coming out by the shaft? U joints I get but how much grease goes in the others? I pumped forever and haven’t seen any come out

 

[Sac Cerevisiae]

Per the FSM you can fill the spiders until you see clean grease coming through. The slide yokes should only be filled until you see them move. See the instructions I pasted in this thread: SQOD Squad - Stupid Question Of the Day

 

[pizdets17]

Thanks! Any idea how much this normally takes? I’m prob at 25 pumps and it’s not moved

 

[Sac Cerevisiae]

Depends on how much you pump out per pump, but I'd guess 25 is enough. Is the truck lifted up on on the wheels? Can you take it for a short drive?

 

[pizdets17]

Apparently 26 was enough lol. I did them all except the very front one as my bosses wouldn’t fit in there. Tried with the needle too but doesn’t seem to be enough pressure as it just sips back out

 

[bloc]

Note that overfilling the rear slip yoke is not a good idea. As the suspension cycles it needs to be able to shorten the driveshaft and if there is no air left in there, the grease will have a hard time getting past the seal, and suddenly the shaft can’t shorten quickly enough. This puts a ton of stress on the transfer case output and diff pinion bearings.

I usually go 8-12 and let centrifugal force distribute it around the splines in there. Every time I’ve done this grease has eventually come out, meaning it has enough.

 

[pizdets17]

ok good to know. I assume if I have overfilled it this time the extra will just come out?

 

[tominboise]

I usually give the splines about 6 shots of Lucas red n tacky. I would not pump them full until the grease comes out of the seal. There isn't a lot of movement in the splines under normal operation. The grease should even itself up over time.

 

[Romer]

Added to the Repair section of the FAQ

 

[afgman786]

Question @bloc
So I was greasing today, easily got the rear DS along with spider at rear axle and T case. I plan on doing the front DS tomorrow. I found the zerk for front DS and spider at T case, wasn't able to find the zerk for spider at front axle.

 

[bloc]

Question @bloc
So I was greasing today, easily got the rear DS along with spider at rear axle and T case. I plan on doing the front DS tomorrow. I found the zerk for front DS and spider at T case, wasn't able to find the zerk for spider at front axle.

It's definitely there, unless maybe your front shaft had that u-joint replaced and they didn't install it correctly.

If you imagine looking along the length of the driveshaft, the rear zerk, the center slide zerk, and the front zerk should all point roughly in the same direction. That info might help you find the front zerk.

 

[Sandroad]

I just greased all the zerks using @bloc ’s over the cross member access secret for the rear zerk on the front propeller shaft.
Using a flexible hose I didn’t have to remove any factory skids/plates/shields. Using trial and error and starting the LC just 3 times I got all zerks into position without any wheel lifting. The whole job took 35 minutes including cleanup. Our detached garage is visible from the house and my wife was entertained in our home office as she watched me scooting around under the truck and occasionally popping out to start it and move it an inch.

 

[afgman786]

Is there a trick to getting the grease gun off a zerk? I only had troubles with the zerk for spider of t case and front DS.
Took me a solid 15mins of fighting it off

Also I did what FSM states and went forward and reverse with hard braking accelerating to get the DS to move. After doing that and looking underneath it doesn't look like it compressed/decompressed to spread the grease over the shaft part that's visible

 

[Sandroad]

Is there a trick to getting the grease gun off a zerk? I only had troubles with the zerk for spider of t case and front DS.
Took me a solid 15mins of fighting it off

Also I did what FSM states and went forward and reverse with hard braking accelerating to get the DS to move. After doing that and looking underneath it doesn't look like it compressed/decompressed to spread the grease over the shaft part that's visible

Odd the fit was so tight. I've always had my grease gun pop off with a slight tip to the side. Maybe pry it off with a flat screwdriver tip with duct tape on it to prevent scratching? The bare (non-painted) area of the front/rear propeller shafts don't get "cleaned" off well with any type of on-road driving. I wipe that area with super-fine steel wool followed by a shop rag to clean off gunk and corrosion, then apply marine waterproof grease. They look good and if the rear shaft does compress a bit with suspension cycling, the seals will go over areas that are clean and greased.

 

[Eyedaho]

Is there a trick to getting the grease gun off a zerk? I only had troubles with the zerk for spider of t case and front DS.
Took me a solid 15mins of fighting it off

Also I did what FSM states and went forward and reverse with hard braking accelerating to get the DS to move. After doing that and looking underneath it doesn't look like it compressed/decompressed to spread the grease over the shaft part that's visible

I would recommend getting a new tip for your grease gun. I had a cheap grease gun at work that would get stuck on zerks, and eventually it got stuck hard enough that the zerk broke off before the tip released. AFAIK the nipple size is universal, but I think poor manufacturing tolerances on cheap stuff can cause issues. In this case I would guess that Toyota's tolerances are retty tight (or Mitsubishi in the case of the zerks I was greasing at work), but the tolerances on a cheap grease gun are usually pretty loose, as evidenced by their tendency to leak grease everywhere. You should be able to buy a decent replacement tip for not too much money. That will definitely be easier than trying to extract the broken off zerk, since the hollow shaft tends to fracture when you try to extract it. Ask me how I know...