DRIVESHAFT (2 of 3)
To get things apart, the yoke at the rear of the front driveshaft must be removed. It was stubborn and required quite a bit of torque on the puller to break it free (I was wondering for a while if it would).
I found later that I had deformed the lock ring slot with the puller claws. Due to problems later encountered, I ended up having to remove and replace the yoke several times. Instead of pulling directly on the yoke, I inserted a pair of old trunnion bearing caps with their openings outward and pulled against them, not the yoke. However, the damage was done so I fixed it as best I could.
I cut off the old bearing. I cleaned up and straightened the two metal end shields. Then I installed a new bearing with the a shield behind it. Then I slipped the stamped metal/rubber isolator assembly over the bearing, put on the other shield and the yoke, and torqued it up. Then I reassemble the UJ. Then put the whole bloody mess back on the truck. I had the rear wheels off so I could run the drivetrain with the rear axle up on stands. I fired it up and it spun like a top ! But then..,wait,..,what’s this I hear ?? Damn.,.,.it started squeaking loudly so I shut it off. The shields were hot as hell. I thought maybe I had a bad bearing so I took off the rear driveshaft and ran just the front one. I put my stethoscope to the bearing, it didn’t sound all that great , but after running it for 15 minutes or so, no squeak or obvious overheating.
[Note Added on 8/11/11) I simplified this narrative some so I should also mention something else that happened. The first time I ran the assembled unit, the squeak began, got slowly louder, and then the driveshaft began to wobble violently. I believe this was caused by excessive friction between the shields and the rubber which makes sense considering what I did next.
Next I tried greasing the rubber. Not a long term solution, but maybe that would help me figure out what was wrong. Reassemble and reinstall the driveshaft again. The grease shut it up. I left it like that for a while, figuring I’d get back to the problem later, if there still was one. But later on when I checked, it started squeaking again. The pic below is with the rubber greased up.
So I took the driveshaft apart one more time. Now I could see that the rubber was chafing against the shields. OK, this is good, I know what is wrong now. You can see the flat spot worn into the rubber by the metal shield in the pic below. This was happening on both sides.