Hey, team. I have a '02 with the "clunk" that happens shifting from reverse into drive (and often when downshifting to climb). I've isolated the problem to a bunch of play in the driver side of the front diff. Like if I'm under the truck, I can put my hands on the front drive shaft and the driver CV axle and turn the drive shaft 1/8 (or more?) turn before the CV axle starts to move. The passenger side CV engages almost immediately. The CV axles are both pretty fresh.
My question is this:
Has anyone here ever dealt with something similar? Is there a way to figure out definitively if the problem is the intermediate shaft coming out of the diff or if it's in the diff itself without disassembling the whole thing? Has anybody here ever replaced that intermediate shaft?
What I'm trying to avoid:
If the problem is just that I need to replace the intermediate shaft for a couple hundred bucks, that would be awesome. If I do that and it turns out that I need to replace* the diff itself then I've just cost myself a bunch of time and money unnecessarily.
*I say "replace" because it's relatively cheap compared to a rebuild.
My question is this:
Has anyone here ever dealt with something similar? Is there a way to figure out definitively if the problem is the intermediate shaft coming out of the diff or if it's in the diff itself without disassembling the whole thing? Has anybody here ever replaced that intermediate shaft?
What I'm trying to avoid:
If the problem is just that I need to replace the intermediate shaft for a couple hundred bucks, that would be awesome. If I do that and it turns out that I need to replace* the diff itself then I've just cost myself a bunch of time and money unnecessarily.
*I say "replace" because it's relatively cheap compared to a rebuild.
