[Gromit]

I agree; you can do this yourself; but like others have said in other posts, make sure you mark the position of the drive shaft relative to the rear yoke before disassembly. It was kind of embarrassing but I bought a jar of yellow nail polish for this purpose one day at the local drugstore - the young cashier gal looked at me kind of funny but that was all.

If you decide to tackle it, make sure you orient the u-joints so that the grease zerks are in compression rather than tension as the driveshaft spins in forward gear.

I used a $70 Harbor Freight ball joint press to R&R the U-joints and it works fine for both assembly and disassembly

Mostly the two piece drive shafts only go together one way; (though it is hard to see why on first inspection - if you look closely there is just a slight curve to two of the splines and that pair of splines mates to the wider space of all the grooves of the corresponding yoke)..

Also on my THM350; the trans yoke also only goes together one way, due to a similar kind of spline arrangement.

Though I have to admit; if you could get all this done for $200 and a day; that sounds awful tempting.

But there is also something nice about knowing exactly how everything goes together; and after all you will care a lot more and take a lot more effort than most shops can afford to expend on a job like this - but of course they are miles better at it too than a first time DIY'er like me.

My area doesn't have a dedicated driveline shop - when I called the closest thing we have to that to ask about driveshaft balancing; the owner said balancing wasn't necessary even if all three U-Joints had been replaced so long as I marked the shaft and put it back the same orientation. Not sure I believe him about that though - the three u-joints I took out were all from different manufacturers; one Japanese, One Chinese; One USA (sounds like a joke is coming but sorry its not)...

Here are photos: