Update.

Still working on the first shaft. I have the shaft itself ready to get u-joints pressed in. I'm saving that part until I'm ready to put it back in the Bronco, I don't want u-joint caps falling off and spilling needle bearings (my dogs getting into things ). Its been cleaned, painted, and I took off the slip yoke and cleaned as much of the old brown grease as I could before slathering it in new grease and putting it back together. I say the shaft itself is ready, because the H yoke with the double cardan isn't. I will say this, now that I'm ***** deep into this shaft that attempting to rebuild the centering yoke (CV) is not for those with tempers or lack of proper tools. I can see why someone would just go to O'reilly's and drop the $69.99 to just buy a new one. I have very few tools and a very long fuse, fortunately, on my temper which has been very handy in this regard, the long fuse that is. My goal with my Bronco was to do everything on it, within reason, by myself as a learning experience and to of course save money. So today I had exhausted my resources and ability with what tools I have and had to seek advice/help. Long story short, I went to a place that does drive shafts and the guy that does them there had me back on track in literally 60 seconds. He had the experience, the foot and a half long beard, and the bench vise, welder, and slide hammer that I did not. He was an outstanding guy doing that for free and answering a few other questions I had before I left and if I ever need a new shaft or one balanced, I think he earned my business. I'm looking forward to moving next year. First thing will be a proper working area and some more tools.

I think before I get this shaft complete that I'll have to do my u-joints on my F100. I'll forgo the paint simply because I think the joints are ready to let go and I need a quick turn around since I gotta drive it daily. I'll clean it and paint it when I take it off again to do the transmission seal. Repeat labor I know, but its how I'm gonna tackle it.

I'll have pictures later tonight to show what I've done and where I'm at.

 

Here's the transfer case side of the front shaft. This was the hardest part of the removal process of the shaft. Maybe hardest isn't the right word... tedious I guess. The front side has standard 6 point nuts. This side has the 12 point bolts and it's wedged right between a cross member, the transfer case skid plate, and of course the frame. I didn't have a 5/16 12 point wrench, so I picked up a cheap set of wrenches for this project. The short length of the wrench required me to use a cheater bar (part of my floor jack handle) in order to get them broken free and the small window around the bolts required a lot of back and forth with the wrench to get them out. Other than that the shaft came out easily enough. It's a lot tighter than it looks in the pics.

 

This is what I started with. After a quick look around the area once I got the shaft off I decided my '75's tailgate would be the sacrificial work bench. I've had the thing since I was 15 and since I blew the engine a few years back I've had a hard time picking it apart.

As you can see, the shaft was pretty nasty, hence why I said in a previous post don't bother cleaning it by hand if you're a perfectionist. It took forever, but I'm pleased with the end result.

 

Once again, I had to improvise. While I was at HF picking up a cheap set of 12 point combo wrenches, I picked up a large C clamp to use as my vise on my tailgate. Sacrilege, I know. Sacrificial parts truck. I don't recommend doing this to a truck you love anymore. lol

Don't believe the Hollywood magic of youtube videos. You can't simply pull off the caps bare handed once they're pressed out. Well, I couldn't anyway, nor do I have the kung-fu grip to use a pair of channel locks to do it. I found one of my cheapy HF vise grips and locked them on. Back and forth and back and forth and they all came off eventually. You can see the typical condition within the u-joint caps. Not very good, eh? No grease and lots of rust in most of them.

 

Here's the "CV" joint. I've read a lot online about this joint. Some call it a CV joint. It's referred to as a centering yoke as well. The double cardan from what I've read is simply because it has two cardan style u-joints within the H-yoke. To quote Wikipedia "A universal joint (universal coupling, U-joint, Cardan joint, Spicer or Hardy Spicer joint, or Hooke's joint) is a joint or coupling connecting rigid rods whose axes are inclined to each other, and is commonly used in shafts that transmit rotary motion. It consists of a pair of hinges located close together, oriented at 90° to each other, connected by a cross shaft. The universal joint is not a constant-velocity joint."

It was in pretty rough shape, like the rest of the shaft's components. I have a pic showing my large screwdriver in the ball of the joint giving you an idea of how I popped it out. At first I thought I was damaging the outer rim of the socket, but then realized it's just a seal, so I didn't worry about smashing it as I ended up doing. Ultimately, I had to use my c-clamp along with the u-joint "press" which is basically another giant c-clamp to hold it well enough to my tailgate as I gave 'er what she needed to get the ball out.

 

Here's the result after probably... I dunno.. 3 hours of screwdriver scraping, wire brushing, and soapy water with green scotch brite pads. PITA. I mean, come on... you saw how nasty it was to begin with. A drill with a wire brush might have helped. Maybe a bench grinder with a wire wheel. Sand blaster. I dunno. Drop it in a hot tank. My route was definitely not the easiest way to do it. I will say that had I not cleaned it that I wouldn't have known the shaft has a dent in it, which might be good knowledge to have later on if I notice vibration or something along those lines. It also revealed some marks and letters which may or may not be of significance.

I decided to take off the slip yoke dust cap. It came off very easily, it was finger tight. You can see the "chocolate icing" I was seeing coming out of the vent hole at the end of the slip yoke. Yummy! I was going to clean it, but instead put it back together and decided to paint up the shaft before I introduced any old/new grease.

 

Looking good, but before starting any major dirty job I take the offending greasy nasty part to the local carwash, blast it with Simple Green, Easy off over cleaner, cheap carb/brake cleaner, air craft paint stripper and close range blast that gunk off.

A small frame set of cheap ratchet wrenches make that job better.

 

I didn't search hard for paint to use. I was at Walmart getting some shop towels, some disposable gloves, and whatnot and saw some black paint with the words "fast dry" and thought that sounded great. Its been pretty cold here lately, though the day I painted the shaft was "warm". It was probably high 40's low 50's out with a slight breeze. I'd say the paint was dry to the touch in 2 minutes. I painted the shaft and held it from the ears until it was dry enough to lay down without leaving black, which was about 2 minutes. It probably took the full advertised 15 minute dry time before it was cured. I didn't paint a thick coat so that helped with the drying time.

I didn't tape anything off when I painted. Once I got the shaft inside and put it on some shop towels I used some acetone and pieces of cloth to wipe down the bores for the u-joints. The paint came right off nice and easy. I'm not real sure what a good shaft should look like, but after looking the shaft and splines over there's definitely some wear. I'm sure some time down the road the Bronco will need a replacement front shaft. I'll probably wait until I lift it, though I'm not 100% sure I'll even lift it, we'll see. Before I took the yoke off, you can see I marked the shaft and yoke with a small white chalk mark. I don't think it was really that necessary, it's easy to see when the yokes aren't lined up and in phase especially when you lay the shaft and slip yoke flat on one ear so they don't roll around, but better safe than sorry. I cleaned out the splines and cleaned out the yoke as best I could before slathering on some Redline CV-2 Synthetic grease and working it into each spline. I looked at what Summit had available for grease and then checked out the various Brands' websites. This one said it was usable for u-joints, so in the cart it went. I dunno about using it inside the slip yoke, but it seems it's better than the chocolate icing, we'll see!

 

Funny that you mentioned Simple Green. I picked some of that up after cleaning this one to use on the next one. Carb cleaner didn't even touch the level of grime I had on this shaft. I hit it with a few different things prior to doing what I did.

 

Good thread on cleaners. https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...-old-mess.html

Hang in, eye pro a must.

 

I'll definitely try the pressure washer at the car wash on the next one if it's as bad as this one. I'm pretty sure the rear shaft on the Bronco is newer. It has a label on it from a local drive shaft shop, so it can't be too old compared to this one.

 

Here's the old "CV" guts and the new replacement guts. When I do the rear shaft on the Bronco I'll do a proper write up since I'll know what I'm doing on that one, hopefully. The issue I was having at this part, which is where I'm currently at, was that the sleeve? race? I dunno what to call it, was stuck inside the socket where I popped the ball out. I tried using a pry bar with it clamped down on my tailgate, no dice. I was doing more harm than good at the rate I was going. I spent a good 30 minutes to an hour trying various things, determined to get this done on my own. I finally gave in and went to my mechanic to get some advice. One of his employees suggested maybe taking a dremel and slowly chipping away at it until it gave. I asked my mechanic what he thought once he wasn't busy and his answer was less than stellar. He said that's why he doesn't like to mess with drive shafts, specifically rebuilding what I was, he said he sends that stuff off to a drive line shop. He did, however, give me guidance on where to go to get an answer, so I went to the shop he suggested.

The shop he suggested was Fleetpride. I'm not familiar with them, but it was literally down the block from where I was at. They have one dude that works there that does their drive shafts. His name was Mort, he had a huge beard, and I explained my situation. He gave a couple mhmms, said to wait a minute, and he finished what he was doing. A couple minutes later he grabs the part I showed him, stuck it in a vise on his work table, tack welded four opposing spots on the sleeve that was stuck, then slipped in the end of his slide hammer that had some sort of disk on the end of it so that the disk was behind the four tacks and then he gave it a couple hard yanks and it was out. I felt like a bitch. lol Why didn't I think of that.. oh yeah.. I don't have any of those items. Super nice guy he was.

You can see the ring of rust that was below that sleeve, I'm sure that contributed a lot to why it was stuck in there. I obviously don't have a pic of what he did to get it out, but you can see the before and after pics. There's a little bluing, that's not in the pics, from where it got hot from the welds, but I don't think that'll be an issue. I placed the new "CV" ball/sleeve on top of it to give you an idea of what's next. I still need to finish cleaning it up. I'm going to attempt using the u-joint kit I got to press it in. I imagine it'll go in pretty easy. I'll clamp the press to my tailgate with my c-clamp and then use my 1/2 drive ratchet to turn the u-joint press "bolt" to pop it in. I'm sure it'll be a grand 'ol time.

 

Update again.

I got the Bronco front shaft all put together. I stopped taking pictures after I smashed my left thumb and bruised it under the nail pretty good. That scene from Happy Gilmore where he's cussing out the ball on the golf course was pretty much what I was doing to that drive shaft. I'll have to buy another u-joint after I smashed one to get it out after putting it in, that's when I smashed my thumb.

From what I can tell, the yoke on the shaft that holds the cv ball doesn't have parallel ears or should I say, the ears aren't parallel on their outer sides. When you lay the shaft flat on one ear the other ear has a slight angle, but the bores going through the two ears line up just fine, there's no binding with the u-joint. What my problem was was that I tried using the giant c-clamp u-joint tool on it and every time I'd start screwing it tight it'd press in the u-joint cup at an angle and it wouldn't go in very smooth. Once I realized what was going on I had to use the socket method to tap it in straight and then use the u-joint tool to press it in the rest of the way. I had more problems after that, but I'm done with story time on that shaft. At this point I'd glad it's done, but I'm kinda upset that there's another one to do. lol

I did the shaft on my 77 without cleaning or painting the shaft and it took me about 1 1/2-2 hours to do the 2 u-joints. That's start to finish. It was a 180 compared to that Bronco front shaft. I wanna say that u-joints are probably the hardest easy job I've done so far, if that makes sense.

I have a question, maybe I'll get an answer here, if not I'll start a new thread on this specific issue. When I went to put the shaft back in on my 77 I noticed the gap around the trans output shaft wasn't uniform. It looked like the shaft was tilted down slightly. I touched it prior to slipping the yoke on and it would wobble a little. Is that normal or is the tailshaft bearing toast? I know this transmission isn't a happy camper in general and it hasn't been in the 3-4 years I've had this truck, so it wouldn't surprise me.

 

Does the transmission sound kind of buzzy with a very slight grindy tinge to it?

I think it's a copper or bronze bushing sleeve. But if the yoke fits tight on the output shaft splines, and they're both sagging relative to the case/tailhousing, then that could be the case.
You might well be able to leave the transmission in the truck and just remove the tailhousing. Not sure if those bushings are an easy DIY?

But if you do end up replacing the bushing, you will really need a new yoke - which sucks in light of the new U-Joints... If the yoke doesn't appear to worn or 'wallowed,' you can reuse it, but it will wear (out) the bushing faster than would a new yoke.

 

The transmission has had a vibration/rubbing noise since I've had the truck. When I got it it wouldn't move very easily and when I checked the fluid level on the trans it was very low. I filled it up and it's done fine since then, minus the vibration/noise. It's only there when it's in gear, so when it's in neutral or park it's very smooth and quiet. Sometimes its stronger than others.

I'll have to get under there again and check to see if it has play with the drive shaft in. I only noticed it when I went to put the shaft in and touched it to see if it was loose. Once I got the shaft on I had to clean up and drive to work, so I didn't have time to investigate further. I had more noise and vibration due to the u-joints going bad (one cap was missing all the needle bearings), but since replacing them that has disappeared.