Rick Question about your U-joints?

[Ray Lobato]

Hey Rick,
When you put your Atlas II in what kind of U-joints did you use? Are there any HD stuff available. I get my Atlas II in a couple of weeks and want to line things up now.
Thanks

 

[Gofast]

U-joints

Ray, Thought I had on u-joints. I put spicers up front on the half shafts. No grease types. ( No zerts ) I wanted the beefiest I could get up there, because it's a pain to replace the halfshafts due to the c-clip.

On the drive shafts, I went weaker. Yea, weaker. I installed the greasable types. My theory was that they are easier to get too. If somethings is gonna break I wanted the weak-link to be easy to get too. I can trail fix them pretty easy too. I would rather snap a u-joint on the drive shaft than have something else let go.

Anyway, that was my theory. Does it hold water?

Thanks Rob

BTW. Atlas II? I smell another Big Dog on the loose. Gerald, Tom Wilk...You guys see this coming?

 

[Rick]

Ray, I went with the Brute Force U-joints all the way around. We use 1310 series U-joints.

Important! The case is shipped with a CV yoke in the rear instead of the front like we have on our Explorers from the factory. If you want to change it to a front CV or both with CVs tell them now.

Happy crawling

 

[Rick]

Rob, when I blew my yoke at Truckhaven the OEM U-joint was still intact even though it had 130,000 miles on it... Go figure.

 

[Gofast]

Theories....

Oh well, so much for my theory. I never would have thought that the yoke would have been the weak point. But, then again, all my factory u-joints are spicers.

 

[Ray Lobato]

Rick,
So you have a single U-joint set up on both the front and back, of the transfercase, and using the 1310 U-joints? How do you like that? Would it be and advantage for me to do that same thing? You actually took the CV yoke out and replaced it with a single U-joint yoke?

 

[Rick]

CV joints require a special yoke. Advanced Adapters sends the T-case with the special CV yoke in the rear. While it is possible to use a single U-joint with the special yoke. It is NOT possible to use a CV joint with a standard yoke.

I have single U-joints on both ends of my front driveshaft and a CV joint on the front end of my rear driveshaft. That's opposite from what the factory has.

CV joints help reduce driveline vibration, they do not allow for more un-restricted movement. In fact they offer less movement than a single U-joint. So I went with a single in front because the front driveshaft is at more of a severe angle than the rear and I wasn't worried about front driveline vibration since all of my time in 4x4 is at slow speeds. I have the double in the rear to eliminate any vibrations and since the shaft is long, angles aren't severe.

However...had Advanced Adapters shipped the T-case with the stock configuration I would have used that.

 

[tdavis]

You can tear the u-joint out of the front axle..

It looks like this:

I did this in tranktrap; it took a few months to finally show up.

 

[mattadams]

hey Tom, is it my imagination or does look like the actual shaft is damaged and the u-joint is fine? It's tough to tell and maybe I'm looking at it wrong, maybe one caused the other? Anyways, I replaced my front axle u-joints a while back with the help of David Meisner, and next Monday the Explorer goes in to get new driveshaft/new U-joints, as well as a few other things. I'm definately trying to get the strongest, non-greasable u-joints I can find as those are a ***** to swap out even in a garage, I'd hate to have to do it on trail.

 

[tdavis]

well, it's hard to tell in that picture (yup, it's really worse than it looks in this case).

The joint was torn to shreds, by the fact all four leaves (ok, 3 in that picture) was either bent, torn off, or had elongated holes.

We had a bad time trying to find that axle in the SFBay area too.

 

[Ray Lobato]

Rick,
I called them today to check and see if I needed to have them change the yoke, but they now have it right. The guy I talked to said that the CV style yoke is now in the back.

 

[Scott B.]

Greaseable Joints

For those interested in greaseable u-joints, you can get ones that have a grease fitting in the cap (as opposed to the body) By moving the fitting to the cap, the body is much stronger. You will need a needle fitting on your grease gun to grease these.

I have 52K miles on a set of Neapco greaseable, and have had no problems to date. In theory, a greaseable joint will last longer than a non-greaseable, but I did get 100K out of my non-greaseable factory Spicer joints, so this might be a moot point.....