Lubed my shaft…

[OnTheReel]

After 8500 miles, I was starting to develop the clunk and a slight jolt when coming to a stop. There’s a service bulletin on the slip joint being dry, and it would have been fixed under warranty. But it’s also free to fix it myself so I did.

Used Quicksilver Extreme Grease to lube the splines. Was able to re-use the boot clamp and hardware no problem. Just added some blue loctite to the bolts when putting it back together and everything is good to go. Nice and smooth again.

 

[quietpeen]

Nice, i even wonder how long the factory “fix” will last.. how did you get the clamp back on to hold the boot in place?

 

[OnTheReel]

Wasn’t counting on their fix lasting. Figured I’d wind up doing it myself eventually either way.

For the clamp. To take it off, pry up on the band (red arrow) with a flathead until it goes over the tab (yellow arrow) and comes free. Once it’s off, you can straighten up any bends in the clamp to prep it for re-install.

To re-install the clamp, feed a small flathead through the last hole on the brand and “grab” the big tab (yellow arrow again). You can then use the screwdriver to lever the band back over the tab without any special tools. Once it’s over the tab, the clamp may still be a bit loose. Use the correct crimper (or improvise something) to squeeze the area in the blue circle together to tension the clamp back up.

By the way, no way to shortcut this job. My first plan was to just slide the boot up and grease whatever splines I could see. Unfortunately at ride height all of the splines are buried, couldn’t see any. So off the driveshaft came.