I had this knocking noise coming from my rear n/s and I natrually thought it was the wheel bearings. How wrong was I when I checked the U-Joints!!

It's taken me about 3 days to finally remove the half shaft and get the old u-joints out. These old u-joints were in there from day one and even with a sledge hammer at hard force wasn't budging!! I finally had to cut them out with an angle grinder.

Moral of this story is that some people could be lucky in doing the u-joints with ease, and some could have the problems like i did. So if some say ''easy peasy job to do'' then don't take this on board because some can be your worst nightmare!!

Anyway, .... All sorted now ;-)

 

Good work.

I've replaced many UJs in my day. Most went easy. More than a few, though, really fought back


Cheers
DD

 

Congratulations, Dave, and thanks for posting the photos!

Cheers,

Don

 

Glad you got 'er done but looking at how clean and corrosion free those yokes are I'd say you need a bigger hammer.
A press is actually the way to go, less chance of knocking over the needle bearings in the cups(why won't that cap go all the way in?) or bending a yoke. Take it from a guy who has wailed on his own thumb with a full swing of a 3# hammer.

 

Thanks guys, .... I ended up hitting it with a spare socket sitting inside the U-J and a sledge hammer. I have a press but felt it wasn't man enough to do this job, hence i've broke 2 presses before, so i'm back to gut instinct ;-)

Would like to have changed the axle / half shaft nuts and studs but looking at the studs I can't see how they could possible come out because the differential in the way of them releasing fully out from the back, or am I missing something here?