My wifes 2000 4runner is vibrating pretty bad and I want to replace the ujoints.

Has anyone used something besides Toyota brand and had decent luck? Any of the big auto chains sell spicer?

This is a 2wd limited and there are no zerks or other grease points on the ujoints or driveshaft.

 

Dont get precision u-joints if your looking for a different brand. Ive heard of "creeper" joints but they are more 4x4 specific so im not sure if they woud have them for your truck. I have a freind with chromoly u-joints in his xj, apparently they are unbreakable

 

Go with OEM toyota joints

 

Is it best to replace all 3 when you've got vibes?

Also, is there just one part that is used for all 3 places? It looks to me like the one near the rear end has different zerk placement. Am I right?

 

x2

I had a vibration in my driveline and it was the shaft and not the joints. Maybe that is your problem. It only cost $150 to have the d-shaft retubed and rebalanced. And I went with thicker .095 wall tube.

The driveline shop that did the work said there is nothing better than stock Toyota ujoints. He said every time he works on a Toyota d-shaft he is amazed how well the ujoints hold up and they almost never are bad. We reused my ujoints for that reason, he said there was no need to change them, they were perfect. Mine had alomost 80k on them at that time.

Drives perfectly smooth now.

 

It was definately the ujoints that were bad. Several sides had bearings inside that had turned to powder.

These were OEM ungreasable joints. The vehicle has 90k miles on it of dry arizona weather and grocery getter detail.

 

I think I am going to be doing this soon... How much of a pain in the arse is it on a scale of 1-10?

 

Tough to say. One man's 10 is another mans 5.

I've done a number of ujoint replacements before and these were the worst.

If you have decent tools and have done ujoints before then I would say go for it. If not, things can get frustrating pretty quick.

Toyota wanted $265 to do the job (2wd so just two joints).

Tools I used:
Brass Hammer
Brass Drift
Ujoint Tool from harbor freight
Vise(and a long work bench)
Grinder with cut-off wheel

Some people can get by with a few different sizes of sockets and a hammer. These joints were pretty much toasted so I had trouble getting the caps pushed all the way out of the yokes. Had to cut a few off with the grinder. new ones went right in no problems.

 

What are the symptoms of requiring a new driveshaft? Vibrations at a certain speed?