eggplant

I honestly never expected them to last this long, I’m pretty impressed!

I religiously grease my 1310 TW drive shafts every 6000 miles and or every time I come back from an off road trip. This includes greasing the center bearings which requires you to remove the shaft completely in order to easily get to the flat zerk fitting in the middle. PITA! But I guess it’s worth the trouble seeing how long they are holding up.

My question is, after 4 years and 64,000 miles, should I start thinking about replacing the joints?
If one starts to fail, is it something that usually happens suddenly and catastrophically or are there warning signs like unusual vibrations or noise? I’m not experiencing any vibrations or anything at all at this time. I’m just wondering if I should be preemptive about it.

Just need a little input if anyone has anything to offer…

Rebar-7

Wow I'd just keep doing what your doing, no need to mess with if not broke.Do you have the gold seal joints in The DS ?

eggplant

They're the Gold Seals

Maertz

you can check the caps for play and make sure they still spin. With that good maintenance i wouldbt be surprised for the shaft to last double that. the first this to go would either be the u joints or cv id guess.

Kojack

if I was worried about drive shafts quitting after 60k, I would find something else to use. I have 125k on my stockers and I don't even think about them. Don't know if my 2011 came with uber shafts or something. But my driveshafts are something that does not even cross my mine to fail on my rig. If one does, another factory stock one is going in.

SabrToothSqrl

I have 140,000 on the stock driveshafts of a Mazda Tribute

lol

eggplant

Stock shafts in stock configuration (unlifted) is a completely different animal as in apples to oranges.
I wouldn't even think about it either...

Kojack

what are you running to eat drive shafts. sounds like something is not built correctly. No matter what shaft you use, they should last LONG, unless your angles are wacky.

eggplant

Did you even read my post? Nothing is "eating" my drive shafts. On the contrary.

Please do some research and you'll understand why 65,000 miles is a pretty long time for double cardon drive shafts on a lifted vehicle, especially for the front DS u-joint.

Even though not under load full time, the angle for the front shaft will always be less than optimal. The front end drive line angle will always be a comprimise between castor and pinion angle unless you cut off the factory control arm mounts and rotate them back a few degrees to factory locations.

It's all good, nothing to worry about...

eggplant

check these links.

Rzeppa Cv Joint (mostly stock)

Double cardon (mostly after market)

Completely different designs and differnet applications.