Yea, it's rediculous. people complain when someone goes in their thread and spews out "internet conjecture" and then they jump into someone elses thread and does the same thing. gotta hate that. Tracy, now you see why I told you I limit my visit here to maybe once a week.

 

As someone asked before, how close is the 4th Gen to the 3rd Gen here is a write up from 4x4 Wire http://www.4x4wire.com/toyota/maintenance/cv_axle/

 

They Are The Same. Same Semi-Floating outter with one big nut and Same inner splines to be "poped" out with a pry bar.

 

a few suggestions:

buy, borrow, or download a FSM (factory service manual) for your vehicle. study the section regarding the front drivetrain and learn what the different parts are and how they go together.

if you did indeed break a shaft or cv, get 2 stockers from a junkyard or from your local autozone. replace said broken part, carry the other one for a spare.

all flygt was trying to say is that trying to bombproof IFS parts is a waste in the long run

 

That is the write up I used when I did mine, very good write up, mine are manual hubs so they are slightly different but that should be the same as yours. The only thing I didn't do was use a jack to push my upper arms, mine drooped enough to work fine. In fact, that write up was better than the one in my Haynes manual!

 

r0cky, I believe you are the first person to have broken a CV on a 4th Gen. I know I have put mine through hell, James and Michael have done the same to is, and I know a few others as well. I also believe Lance has beat the living daylights out of his. Yet none of us has broken a CV or axle to my knowledge (yet that is ).

My point is that the CVs and front axles are pretty stout on these vehicles.

I have had a number of skinny pedal violations on rocks and other terrian with mine as well, and I can bet you money I'm not the only one.

So first it would be important to understand what actually broke, at this point we all think it is an CV, but we don't know. The axle would probably have to be removed to really understand what is broken or wrong.

Secondly it would be good to understand why the axle broke, so you can avoid it in the future. Maybe you were just extremely unlucky, or you made a bad mistake while driving (happens to all of us) or it could be that somewhere along the line with all the NE experimentation some parts of the driveline got damamged/misaligned or whatever and it is only showing it's head now. The best is to figure it out and try to avoid t in the future, but first get it fixed.

And even a complete new axle assembly at the dealer is not that expensive compared to what you have spend on your truck so far. Something like $300 I believe for the whole thing. I'm sure if you shop around you can probably find a cheaper alternative.

Good luck and let us know what you find.