[ColoMtnMan]

My poor baby is having some struggles. She vibrates like a mofo at speed. A dealer and an indy shop bot said t-case and rear diff have excessive play. Dealer tech had it on lift and I was able to move the drive shaft at both the transfer case and the rear diff by hand. Drive shaft could also be bent. At 307.8k mi I'm not surprised.

So what do I do? I'm pretty handy and have quite a few tools. No press though. It's also my DD so would need to be able to do work on weekends start to finish.

Options:

1) have the stealership do the work for ~2.5 k + toy oem parts

2) shop around for drive line specialist to do the work and trust them with part source

3) the work has to get done, make some changes to start building out as a play/camping rig. I now live in Flagstaff and I'm eager to explore. Thoughts and opinions welcome

4) Find a few junkers, pull parts, clean and install. Or eBay? Pray the new to me is better than I expect? I'm not a gearing dork and getting things all meshed correct seems like it could be a problem for a novice like myself.

99 4wd 5spd e-locker.

[rdruss]

I guess I'd start with drive shaft and u-joints and verify that they are good/bad and correct, then go from there depending on results with good shaft and joints.

[T4topher]

If you seriously have up/down side/side play at your tcase flange and your pinion flange I would recommend just buying a tcase, new 3rd member, and driveshaft from a junk yard, Toyota specific salvage yard, or Facebook market. If your really handy you can have all this done in a weekend easily. Since your a manual you probably have a jshift which I think is a pretty common tcase, you just have to figure out what gear ration your rear pinion is (watch YouTube videos to figure it out). Driveshaft is going to be the toughest part to find, manual has a pretty specific driveshaft, has to be out of a manual 4wd. Might be cheaper to rebuild the 3rd but would have to pay a shop which might end up costing more.

Edit: you should post a video on YouTube showing the play you’re talking about.