Ya, it seemed I did. Had to put the Jeep in neutral and roll it forward and back so that I could get the perfect angle on the fitting and get the needle between the u-joints. Didn't have to push on it very hard and give it a couple pumps. It wasn't apparent at first that anything was going in but then I saw some grease ooze out from somewhere else. I declared that as a victory. Haha.

 

Yes it sucks. The only way to grease it properly is to drop the DC end of the shaft from the tcase. Then you can open the DC joint and get to the inside zerk fitting for the centering ball.

The thing that no one ever talks about is for all the aftermarket driveshafts you need to remove the shaft every 5k miles to grease this joint. Ignore that and your tcase can go boom! And you can't trust any jiffy lube kinda place or the dealer to be lubing that joint either, they definitely won't. It's such a pain cause it makes what would be a 1 minute deal lubing a driveshaft into like a 30 minute ordeal.

There is one company (coast I think?) that uses a sealed "non greasable" centering ball. In this case you would replace the centering ball every 80-100k miles instead of greasing it. The TJ used this on their front driveshaft I believe. There is a spicer part number for the non greasable centering ball I swapped one into my tatton front driveshaft a few months ago because I was tired of the greasing ordeal every 5k miles. Will see how that goes I'm really tired of angry sparrows, lol

 

Yeah I take the shaft down every time it's just greasing that fitting. For some reason it won't take grease no matter what needle adapter I try using

 

You are starting to make me wonder if I didn't grease mine properly. Although I'm almost positive I did. I didn't have to drop the transfer case end of the driveshaft, just had to get it to rotate to the right angle for access. Am I missing something? It was one of those inverse zerk sir whatever that you use the needle fitting on.

Agreed though that dropping it every 5000 miles would be pain in the arse and I didn't even know I was supposed to be greasing it. But glad I caught it early and hopefully before any real damage was done.

No sparrows have returned, at least not yet.

 

It could be a bad water pump. I had a similar issue and had it replaced under warranty on my 2013. The replacement chirps randomly now at 55k miles. If it fails again, I'll be looking for an aftermarket upgrade.

Try to listen for a bad bearing that sounds like a loose belt. Good luck.

 

Yes I do. And I have a Lincoln pneumatic grease gun and fittings kit, not that flimsy plastic needle they give you with the shaft. What I do now is pull out the zert fitting and just pump grease into the opening with the needle tip. Also pump grease around the edges of the ball and move the joint all around to get grease well under it.

Just an FYI: Having 23 fittings on my Jeep means that some of them get mucked up. A brief hit with a flame from a blow torch can free up a fitting if it isn't taking grease. Be careful how much heat and where it goes, wouldn't want to damage nearby parts!

 

I had been camped the night before just across the Arkansas border from Memphis, TN. That night really severe storms came rolling in about 4 a.m. There was a pause in the lightning and rain, so I pulled up stakes and headed out. In Memphis the Interstate was pretty flooded. I suspect this was what actually caused the problem, I just didn't notice it until I was driving slowly with the windows down through Shenandoah.

I did have it happen one other time: While heading from Maze Overlook to Happy Canyon in The Maze District of Canyonlands. This area is really remote, but the next day we'd be passing through Hanksville, Utah. Since I figured I wouldn't need 4WD for that part of the trip, a friend and I pulled the front driveshaft off of the Jeep. In Hanksville found the fellow who runs the emergency tow service for the area and he greased up the shaft for a couple bucks. What really bothered me was I had greased up the shaft just before starting the trip. Now I'm careful to put even more grease in it, and pull that zert fitting (as described in another post).