My Experience

1st T4R was a 2005 SR5 and I was second owner at 80k miles. It was serviced by the dealer I bought from and had all Toyota maintenance logged on file.

Just after I bought the runner, heard slight clunking. Went underneath and found all spiders and yokes were bone dry. I did my own maintenance/lube on them and never had an issue and clunking went away.

My 14 Trail found same thing when dealer performed 30K Maintenance so once again I did this.

Last week, checking under my 17 TRDP and found the yokes F/R both dry. Once again, did the lube maintenance on them.

My take and opinion, this is not hard and its just another example of the dealers trying to take you for every penny they can......if you let them.

My two cents of course

well these do require grease . DIY people may think more is better.. which is most times the bad...

my greasing at 10K oil changes working great, but I am no idiot and pump the sh*t out of it ...

GM should have installed the yoke grease fitting to lube it .. my 18 yr old GM truck now has no clunk 175K miles 4wd .. it did before I dropped the shaft started around 30K miles ...

toyota did do this correct , but it does appear some dealerships will not do this greasing ...or may use the wrong grease ..moly works on the yoke lasts long time ..no clunks ...

I also have a 20ft boat mercrusier stern drive . has a U joint and yoke.. that,, I also lube the same ... coat the yoke shaft with moly grease .. slides out every year, when I service the drive no problems..

not a good day when the out drive lower unit is seized and cannot come out ..

IMO you do what ever you want .. this is my experience on drive shafts ..I also did repair U joints on very large vehicles so these forum questions I do find weird since it is a common question repeatedly ..

let say you did put too much in the yoke or some person reading this ... remove the grease fitting and drive it around the block .. the vehicle movement causing the yoke to move will throw out the excessive amount of grease .. so if the grease does come out that indicates too much,

yokes only require a coating on the yoke do not want to fill the yoke cavity with grease then it will bind up damage stuff...

related, the "arkie6 fix" to address the driveshaft clunk is a similar process. the slip yokes are a little tricky in that they don't give you the feedback the spiders do, so it's hard to tell the difference between too little and too much grease.

http://www.toyota-4runner.org/proble...tml#post533780

"If all that is a little more than you want to tackle, here is an easier way that is probably just about as effective. Take your grease gun loaded with lithum base moly chassis grease and start pumping grease in the slip yoke zerk fitting. At some point you will encounter significant resistance on the grease gun handle and will likely note that the slip yoke is expanding. Slowly add grease at this point. You will likely see the slip yoke expand on each pump of the handle and then slowly contract. Continue adding grease for about 5-10 more strokes unless you see grease coming around the seal, then stop. Now get on the rear bumper and bounce it up and down a few times. This will tend to compress the slip yoke and force more grease along the splines. Now take a wrench and remove the zerk fitting to allow excess grease to escape. Once the zerk is removed, if a tablespoon or so of grease doesn't come out, then gently bounce on the bumper again to give it a little help. Once the excess grease is out, re-install the zerk, clean up the mess, and you are good to go."

Thanks, appreciate and respect your input, as I've seen a lot of the questions you've answered for members, especially around DIY maintenance. Just wondering about this one in particular cos there are so many different opinions. For instance, over at this thread at ih8mud https://forum.ih8mud.com/threads/too...-shaft.378824/. One guy makes a good argument about why you need to grease until some grease purges from the seal to ensure you're actually pushing grease to the splines. But others talk about how too much can put pressure in the wrong places. I can make sense of both schools of thought. But has anybody actually experienced problems from greasing until the seal purges vs just using 1-2 pumps?

Has anybody ever had a mechanical failure due to over greasing or using the wrong kind of grease? I have only heard of prop shaft failure due to them being dry.

the reason they don't want you to use moly in the spiders is that its too slippery , it will cause the needle bearings in the cup not to rotate and thus flat spot on the sides of them as they wear , moly is intended for higher pressures and shafts , not bearings .

I grease around every 5000 Km , EP-2 for spiders and moly for slip yokes , or if it is driven through any major rain storm they get it . Been doing it this way on these shafts for 25 years and as someone mentioned they pretty much haven't changed any.

You can see the silver moly purge on the underside directly above the slip yoke if its not spinning any grease out you are not totally covering yoke with grease , I pump till it expands always have , and grease spiders untill I know I completely flushed out all old grease all 4 cups and see new grease come out usually 6-8 pumps this ensures all metal wear particles /water / dirt are removed .

Never had an slip yoke issue or replaced a U joint in 25 years and I put many miles on Toyota drive shafts

heres some pics of mine

Attached Images

 

spider

Attached Images

 

Slider should not have that much grease slinging around. You are over greasing it.

Agree with MossJenks. Did the same for my Toyotas--FJ40 bought new in 75,drove for 10 years, then 4R bought new in 84, drove for 32 years. NEVER had a failed ujoint or slip yoke, never had a clunk. AND, I "overgreased" them according to many posts in this thread. I know I'm old school, but the driveshaft/u-joints on my 2016 4R look the same to me as the old ones so I can't understand why they should be treated differently. Are they really that complicated?

Not Complicated but too much grease can and will push dust capout on the other end of that yoke. Some one has good picture here of that actually happening. Not the end of the world but why overdo it just to have to fix things.

you must remember that is 8 years worth of grease stuck there , greased every 5k Km , it didnt sling that all at once lol

@BlackWorksInc can you please provide some insight on the right way of going about greasing? 4 pages of conflicting opinions here.

Hmm. I was not aware that could happen. Guess I will have to change my evil ways. This 4R has to last until the end of my life!

Thanks for info, I'm old but I can still learn new tricks.