Weird steering problem

About 2 years with TRD Offroad tin dust cover, another 2.5 years with RCI skid. Which is narrower than the stock skid, just to say.

But that's irrelevant, since I offroad, so the u-joint has been fully submerged, packed with snow, sprayed with New England winter salt soup, it regularly saw ocean salt, etc.

 

I was curious because the ones that we saw siezed usually had rhe skid pan removed. Customers would install snow plows and when the mounts interfered they left the pan off. Salt spray would make it to the U joint.

 

You mentioned that the new power steering fluid is green. Don't our trucks use Dexron II/III ATF for power steering?

 

The cap says "PS fluid", and it looks and smells like Pentosin CHF-11S. The book in glove compartment says "ATF", yes.

 

I meant to say it never leaked. There was no sign of the coming failure.

 

You know what? It was not Toyota, it was me. I recall how I was crawling around and under the truck with a can of cavity wax last summer or the summer before. I saw rust on that U-joint and my jerk knee reaction was to spray some wax. Two seconds later I understood what I just did and tried to remove as much as was possible. Apparently enough of sticky mess left in the joint for it to attract dust over time and freeze the joint.

Don't do that =)

 

Replaced with a new shaft, all is good. Also while dancing around the shaft I realized it's impossible to spray it from the top, so it must have been Volvo, not Tundra =) I didn't do anything to Tundra's one, it just died from offroad use.

Order of operations for fellows:
1. Remove lower bolt
2. Rotate the steering to expose the upper bolt
3. Fix the steering wheel!
4. Remove the upper bolt
5. Remove the shaft

Don't touch anything or you'll be doing a wheel alignment and, potentially, SAS reset.

6. Connect the new shaft to the steering column. Tighten the bolt
7. Use ratchet extension to guide the lower part of the shaft into the steering rack. Steering column should be unlocked
8. Rotate the steering to expose the lower bolt hole
9. Install the bolt. Make sure to thread it in properly. Extremely easy to misalign and garbage the threads. I had to run the chaser.

While aligning the wheels I found my rear axle is twisted 0.15 degrees. Well, can't do anything about it.

 

Did you use thread locker on the pinch bolts?

 

No. There was no thread locker there. I sprayed the threads to prevent corrosion, but I don't think the thread locker is necessary, because the bolts have a coarse thread, they are always loaded and can't back out.