The reason the shop wants to change both driveshafts is that they can make more money by selling more parts in way less time. If you can do it your self it will be a huge money saver. Mark the positions of the u joints and put them back the same as they came out & you should not need re balancing on the drive shafts.

 

Good point, Bobby. Of course, if you have NOT authorized the dealer to do any work other than give you an estimate, and they trashed the shaft, then they owe you a new one anyway.
Look for a truck shop in your area (Ryder or Penske) and ask the shop guys who they use for their drive shafts. I found a guy here in KC that does all the shafts for Ryder in a shop behind his house. If the u-joints have gotten really bad they can elongate the holes where the caps go and that could be part of the problem. A good driveshaft guy can cut the ends off and weld new ones on for a fraction of the cost of replacing the entire shaft. They can also press the new u-joints in for you. We took this approach for my buddies truck and had the ends replaced for $110 versus $400 for a new shaft. As far as marking the drive shaft before removal, that does'nt apply in your case because the front shaft is a single unit. You only need to mark the shaft on the longer 2 piece rear drive shaft with the carrier bearing. Be sure to keep us up to date with your results.

 

Thanks for the replies guys. The dealer took at least the front shaft off to do the diagnostic, but they are putting it back together, I'll have the truck back tomorrow morning. They are not being pushy, just telling me what they would like to do. They only charged me $49 to diagnose the problem, so I'm getting the problem diagnosed, tires rotated, and oil changed for $165, not bad IMO.

I plan to do the work myself, so I guess I just need to replace the u-joints as long as the shaft isn't damaged. I'll call around to find the best price on shaft re-builders in the area to see what my options are.

I really don't think I need to worry about the rear shaft until at least spring, so the front will be my focus for now.

Is there a write up on the shaft removal, u-joint replacement?

Anyone know off hand the part numbers for the u-joints?

 

Remove the 4 bolts at the front axle, set the shaft down and remove it from the yolk. Then, just remove the remaining 4 bolts and remove the yolk. Buy greasable u-joints and let the supplier press them in for the extra $20 (if they break them they replace them.) Then, it's just a matter of greasing the yolk and putting everything back the way you found it. Minus the down time for the shop work, your total labor time should be about 15 minutes. Don't forget to hit the new joints with a touch of greass to be sure the caps are full and clean.

 

That's it? I love how easy this truck is to work on!

Thanks for all the help!

I'll update this thread when I get the work done and let everyone know if it fixed my problems.

 

Update!

I was stressing about this massive blizzard thats going to be hammering us the next couple days so I decided to climb under the truck and pull the front drive shaft to get it rebuilt.

I was surprised how easy it was to remove, which was a pleasant surprise since it was already snowing at 6:30am. I dropped the shaft of at the shop and had it back 3 hours later I had it back in the truck.

I went for a test drive and the vibration is totally gone! There is still a little rumbling coming from up front when in 4wd, but I'm thinking that may be the bad sway bar bushings I need to replace. It's not the normal heavy 'bang' the bushings make when I hit big bumps, but I can feel it in the floor, it's just fairly constant and much less intense than the regular bang.

Here is a pic of the rig after a nice shake down run. I took it down the road to make sure it didn't vibrate, but then I went and played in a foot of snow in our private boat launch.