Thanks guys. I think being tired and frustrated last night didn't help. Back at it with a fresh mind today during lunch to do some investigating and prepping for more testing.
Step one was to pull everything I had stored inside, including all my recovery gear bags, tools, some camping equipment, etc. Make sure I don't have anything sliding around that I wasn't thinking about. First impression... holy hell I"m carrying a lot of extra weight.... I am heavily considering pulling my drawer system and selling it. It's pretty sweet to have.. but I have been finding myself completely limited on space for every day things... For the few camping trips I take a year I think I could have everything packed out even more compact across a couple of different bins, and just use my tire table for a cooking surface.. it's probably more sturdy anyway.
There's no reason I need 150-200 lbs of axle stub shafts, tools, and recovery equipment for 95% of the time I spend driving the rig. A basic set of tools to change a tire should suffice.. anything more major I can run back to the house for what ever tools are needed.. At this point I really wish I had a car port or a garage large enough to rig up a pulley system to quickly pull the RTT off the rig... again, a bit silly to drive around the city with maybe 5-8 camping trips a year... lol. If I had to guess, I can probably slim up close to 700 lbs between everything I have on there now.
Anyhow, back to the potential noise... I just got done pulling the TK1 Racing links from both sides and strapped the bar to the frame to get it out of the way. I haven't yet tested this out.. but did want to mention somewhat of a promising find... A while ago since I shifted my axle back, i had some contact from the drive shaft to the gas tank skid. After the first time it hit, I bent it back, and heard it hitting hard again. I left it alone for a few circles around the neighborhood and the noise stopped. After inspecting it, it looked like the weights on the driveshaft "self clearanced" the skid by pulling back a few spots. I decided that was the end of it.
While inspecting the links.. I just happened to look at the skid.. and to my surprise, found what seems to be some-what fresh impact marks, but not only on the skid plate, but also on the rear strap. I'm throwing in a couple of pictures so you can get the idea. It wasn't just a single spot making contact, but rather a few of them near the back of the shaft.
I went at it with a pry bar and really pushed the skid back into place and as far away as possible. I also adjusted my panhard bar to the shortest possible configuration I could get with the passenger side link. This should obviously pull the axle a bit further to the passenger side, and the driveshaft further away from the skid plate....
Thinking back to last night... while making a left-hand U-turn, I hammered the gas to get out of the way quicker, and this resulted in 1-3 solid "thuds" which I originally attributed to the same "clunking" noise I was getting under hard, straight acceleration.. I am now thinking that it is quite possible that what I was hearing was the impact from the driveshaft to the skid.... it makes sense in a hard left-hand turn with the body rolling over right and rearward really hard.. this would have put the driveshaft to the closest position to the skidplate... or am I crazy here?
Anyhow... I'm waiting for my gopro to finish charging so I can strap it under the rig and go do some test runs really quick with hopes that between moving the axle over and disconnecting the sway bar I won't be hearing any of the noises coming from the rear end.. If I do hear the noise.... maybe I can at least have some video assistance to help track it down from this point... if that doesn't work keep you eyes peeled in the For Sale section :banana:
out: If you want it gone for good, buy a completely new driveline with a new slip yoke and keep it greased regularly. But the high moly content grease in the splines may work good, the slip yoke definitely needs different grease than u joints!
