has anybody out there had any troubles with there tundra's rear drive shaft, i just recently took mine in because i could not figure out why it was making a weird noise and the tech looked at it and informed me my drive shaft was bent, but the funny thing is i have never smacked the bottom of my truck on the ground and it just started happening a few weeks ago and i haven't been out 4x4ing with the truck in over a month, if this has happened to anybody let me know or if you know why it might have happened all of a sudden it would be a big help.

 

I just had mine balanced on my T100. The shop informed me of the same thing and explained that auto manufacturers don't take the same time driveline shops will in finding tube that is 100% straight or 100% round but compensate for it with balancing weights. It was probably like that to begin with or...

a "few weeks" is pretty close to "over a month." Are you so sure you didn't spin it up a couple thousand rpms and hit something? One thing you'll find is that if you actually take your vehicle off road, it's going to be really hard to get someone to accept "manufacturing defect" as a cause.

 

thats the problem i haven't had time in the last 2 months to go out and wreck the thing, way to busy at work it just went all of a sudden

 

shrug

problems aren't always apparent as soon as you do the damage?

I never noticed how out of round mine was until I took it out and had it balanced last week and was told how messed up it was. I heard and felt the ujoint go bad, heard the worn out center bearing, saw some dings on the tube but in the almost 8 years I've had it never knew anything was amiss til I started replacing parts on it.

Balancing's cheap, especially if you bring the part in off the vehicle. I'd try that (at an actual driveline shop, not the dealer) if you know the spider and support bearings are good.

 

i just went in and had a local shop here that specializes in toyota's replace the shaft for about 500bucks, they put in a used one from a tundra that had about 15000miles on it and was in an accident, they had it all tested for me and balanced before they put it in runs really smooth now, time to work on the exhaust now that that is behind me, thanks for the help

 

Some of the earlier Tuns had problems because the factory wasn't putting enuff lube in the DS. Most commonly this caused minor binding under hard braking.

 

Another possibility is that it may have thrown a weight off, casuing it to be unbalanced and vibrate. I had a friend that had this happen on a car and the shop said it was bent to get him to buy a new shaft when all he needed was a cheap balance job.