The Toyota Landcruiser Owners Club

[DaveWall]

No harm - I just grab the tractor greese gun every time!

I guess if you have a cartridge of Complex EP2 (the red stuff) it might be slightly better than the bog standard stuff but will still be fine!

Just don't over do it on the sliding joint, it's not like a tractor pto where you can keep pumping until you see it come out!

[Google]

[diggerdave]

Longtime lurker here.  I just wanted to say a big thank you for all the useful info in the original post from Bob and the other comments.

I tackled this job a couple of days ago and all went smoothly after reading all this discussion.  My garage wanted c.£140 to do the rearmost UJ on the rear propshaft (evidently they'd misidentified it as a 'difficult' job, not realising that the circlips are lurking on the inside).  It can seem an intimidating job, especially for someone like me not gifted in the spanner dept.

My experience:

a) make sure you paint your marks on the diff flange and the propshaft end really well and keep renewing them throughout the job.  There will be a LOT of fluids around once you've got the joint removed, loads of white spirit to clean up the joint initially and then huge amounts of penetrating fluid to try to loosen up the old bearing caps.  If you don't watch it your careful paint marks will slowly disappear... even better, as some have suggested, make center punch marks.  

b) You will need an reasonably accurate mark showing the orientation of the main propshaft with the sliding end.  It is very easy to get it one spline out on reassembly if your paint mark looks more like an incontinent bird poo than an engineer's ruler.

c) Forget about 'pressing' the old joint out with a G-clamp if its been there a while (I did wonder if it was possible.  It is not).  You will need a big lump hammer and something to use as a drift that's slightly smaller than the bearing cap diameter.  If you use a socket, you will render it useless so consider it sacrificial.  I didn't soak the bearing caps in penetrating oil before I started - it may be easier if you do.  I don't have a vice so I used two short lumps of fence post as a makeshift anvil.  As the underside bearing cap begins to protrude you need to seat it in the 'gap' between the two bits of wood and reposition it after every blow.  

d) Conversely, and the aspect I was most worried about, pressing the new bearing caps home was easily done with a decent G-clamp and a bit of muscle.  This really was the easy bit of the job although it's the most nerve-racking because of the possibility of disturbing the needle-bearings.  Nothing to be worried about if you're careful.

My old UJ was just beginning to 'whirr' and had no play.  When the old bearing caps were off, three were in perfect nick but one was badly rusted, both the needle bearing and the inside of the cap itself, and was totally dry.  For some reason, perhaps a wad of hardened grease, grease had not been finding its way into that particular cap.  So for the cost of a Roughtrax bearing I'm sorted!

[DaveWall]

Well Done!

Yes I used a center punch and put a mark on each bit - you struggle to wipe that off!

And I find you can get the UJ bits moving with a socket in a decent big vice (easier then using a press IMO) then once going they tap out relatively easy.. the first usually fiddly, then you get the nack

Well done again though!

[DaveWall]

Oh forgot to ask, is anyone replacing the flange bolts with they do theirs? I know on Landrovers it was well worth doing, but I've re-used mine and not had any problem....

[BobMurphy]

[DaveWall]

I have got one of those long thin shaft 14mm sockets (special tool for the Landrover ones as you can't get a normal socket on them).  

I can't see anything wrong with re-using them (in my opinion only - don't replace at your own risk )

[diggerdave]

On the issue of the flange bolts.  Fearing they would be welded shut with rust I did coat them with penetrating fluid three times spread over a couple of weeks before I started the job (not really advance planning, I just kept putting the job off).  They came off very easily with a breaker bar on the bolt head and a normal 12-point ring spanner on the nut - whether I got lucky, or the fluid did its work I can't say.

I re-used the old ones as they looked in good nick.  I have read elsewhere, in reference to Landrovers I think, that its not the shear strength of the bolts that matters for connecting the two parts but the effective friction of the flange face and I guess the same will apply with our LCs.  That made me a little happier about re-using the old ones.  

Interestingly, three of mine had split washers and one had nothing.  As I didn't have a suitably sized split washer I just replaced as was.  Is this a sign that someone has been there before or might it have come from the factory like that (not really what I would expect from Mr T!)?

[poze]

Changed one today, flange bolts are definitely most time consuming thing here

[diggerdave]

I'm resurrecting an old post to add potentially useful info   :

On my front propshaft (KZJ90, built '96, registered '97) the rear UJ (closest to the transfer box) was different from the others described here.  I don't know whether this was standard, or if it has been somehow modified by a later owner, although I saw no evidence of that.  

Just in case it is standard on early vehicles: The UJ had 27mm caps and was 82mm in length with external circlips.  These are quite a common pattern and are used on lots of Jap vehicles as well as pre-1996 landrovers so they're easy to get hold of.  The changing procedure is exactly the same except that the circlips require a pair of pliers to remove and install and it can require a bit of oomph to get the second cap deep enough to install the circlip in the groove.
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1997 KZJ90 3.0d, 2" suspension lift, 235/85/16 Cooper STT Pros. 217k hard miles