Last year my front drive shaft started squealing. After a frustrating time trying to get it fixed by the dealership under warranty, I eventually pulled the drive shaft and replaced the u-joints and centering ball myself. As you can tell from the pictures taken shortly after my last trip to the dealership, they were rather destroyed..  It’s actually a pretty simple process, and a cheap u-joint tool from Princes Auto helped a lot… If only getting a dealership to do a proper warranty repair was this easy….

So, if you hear the angry sparrows a calling from your drive shaft, and lubricating does not help, replace those u-joints!

If you’re looking for a write-up on how to do this, I recommend Stu Offroad’s writeup: http://www.stu-offroad.com/axle/driveshaft/driveshaft-1.htm

This is just a placeholder for the “Jeep” category until I figure out how to place things better… And now some pictures for your viewing pleasure!

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="113" caption="Stopped on the Trail"][/caption]