In what I hope is the winding down of a month-long run of bad luck, the big Ford has started eating u-joints. It started Saturday morning. I was heading down to visit a friend, got about 50 miles from home and the drive line fell apart with little to no warning. Was traveling 60-70 mph at the time. One cap was still stuck in the rear yoke. Didn't have the right tools to take the drive line off, and I've only got 1.5 functional arms right now, so I sucked it up and called a tow truck to haul us to the local Ford house. Got the truck back last night and made it about 10 miles before I got a bad vibration in the drive line and had to pull over. One of the caps had already come off of the new u-joint. Got it hauled back to the dealership and they're as clueless as I am as to what happened. It's a '95 PSD F-350 5-speed 4x4 CCLB with 147K on it. I bought it two years ago and have put on over 50K of those miles since then. The only u-joint problem I've had before this was in May (about 7K miles ago) I had a bolt back out a little and let the rear yoke loosen up. Since then I've driven quite a bit, pulled trailers, etc and had no problems. It's not lifted and I don't go baja-ing through the pastures in it, so I'm not sure what could have caused the problem. I'm guessing that either the driveline got a little bent (but I haven't noticed any vibration going down the road) or the yoke connecting to the rear differential has quit keeping the bolts tight. Any other ideas?

 

Sounds like the cap wasn't seated properly when the clamp was tightened.

 

Sounds like Fords bad. Like you said didn't seat the cap or left bolts loose. Sounds like ford shop bought themselfs some comeback work.

 

Check the rear yoke make sure the little tips are still there. Most yokes have these to hold caps in place. If no tips check for a groove to hold caps in. The clamp itself keeps the caps from coming forward but the tips or grooves hold the caps from going sideways. The last time it loosened on you it may have broke the tips or wore out the groove. Good luck