Grease your drive shafts!

02' Tundra 4WD. Purchased the truck relatively recently. Had the tell tale after deceleration clunk on occasion. Also the shift from park to any gear was rough after the shaft engaged. I cannot suggest this service more strongly! It drives about 3 times better. The shifting is much smoother and doesn't jerk after shifting. Feels incredible. The work wasn't too bad to complete on my own. I couldn't find a nipple though in the 2 pictured locations. Am I doing something wrong or is it possible this was an after market product put in the truck that doesn't have grease access? Also the 4 low won't engage or blink. 4 HI does just fine. Wondering if you guys were able to find the nipples this manual says there are. Thanks in advance!

 

Yup, it's important. So important there's a thread for it: https://www.tundras.com/threads/grease-your-drive-shaft-you-lazy-sods.55067/

Can you give us some pics on what you're looking at with the front driveshaft zerks? Mine definitely has zerks in those spots, though they were tough to get to. Thos are the ones most people bitch about trying to grease.

 

You may have to open up and clean out your 4wd actuator if it won’t go into 4wd low per the owners manual. Also, stupid question but you did rotate the driveshaft to see all angles?

 

I found them boys. Jesus they are dirty! Gonna have to clean em up before getting grease in there!

 

If a simple greasing made the clunking go away, i’d take a really close look at the U joints and slip joint. Either of those items might be already worn out and the grease is temporarily masking the clunking sound.

As for the transfer case, you have to already be in DRIVE on order to shift into 4WD HIGH. Once you’re in 4WD HIGH, you must shift into NEUTRAL, then depress the 4WD LOW button. You also have to reverse those steps to get back into 2WD.

 

You did it wrong @Been-Dranking , you didn’t call us lazy sods!

 

2WD guys: would if I could but I can't so I wont.

 

You can, you just need to toss on some new zerk'd Dana/Spicer u-joints and enjoy the next couple hundo-K miles greasing to your heart's content, with no play/noise/vibration/squeaks

 

Well it hasn't clunked again since but I don't know if it's truly gone. It was happening very intermittently. But the lurch forward, while the brake was depressed, after shifting gears is gone. It's much smoother and definitely makes feel like it's going to keep down unnecessary wear and tear.

 

Gotta say, I feel a hell a lot better being able to grease now as a 2WD guy.
I may have missed this but how many pumps of grease are y’all hitting each ziti with? 2 or 3 maybe?

 

Same standard practice for any joint, follow the three C's:

• Clean the zerk and area around it to avoid contamination/blockage.
• Clamp onto zerk, pump until you see Clean grease
• Clean up the excess old grease, I prefer to wipe that on any exposed steel areas where extra corrosion resistance is helpful.