I cant find it on any websites like orieleys or advanced auto parts etc.

Its not the rear driveshaft but the peice that hooks up to the other side of the transfer case. i know its not my exact TCase but thats the peice, what hooks up to that?





I took my truck to a garage and he said my Front drive shaft is shot, back drive shaft is shot and a wheel hub. he quoted me 1000 to replace them. But i cant find a front drive shaft anywhere.

He said i dont have to worry about fixing it right now, just don't engage the 4wd or else itll end up costing 800 bucks more? Sound legit, or no?

 

What is "shot" about both driveshafts????

 

The only thing that I think might be "shot" will both drive shafts are the u joints...

 

That piece that you have circled is the yoke, a standard drive shaft has 4 of them - one at each end of the drive shaft, one on the transfer case, and one on the differential pinion shaft. In between each pair of yokes, you have the universal joint (U-joint) with it's bearings. There are other drive shaft configurations but I believe that's the explanation for yours.

Normally, the yokes don't "go bad", they will occasionally get damaged when a drive shaft breaks or when the U-joint wears badly and erodes some of the joint bearing seat or retainer tabs. If you have a problem with the joints, you should make sure the yoke is still in good shape and then just replace the center piece of that joint (this is the X piece that has 4 bearings on it). When you go to buy this piece, it's called the U-joint - get the style that has a grease nipple on it (it's in the center of the X).

 

As for your quote, that's hard to tell from your explanation & without pictures. There are garages that will rip you off, and there are also a lot that are relatively honest and try to do a good job. The amount of your quote doesn't surprise me if you have a lot of work needed on both drive shafts and a new front hub as well, but what does surprise me is that you were just given the statement that the drive shafts were "shot". If you do need both complete drive shafts for some reason as well as a new front hub, then that quote is probably real cheap, but I'd suspect that you don't need that much - probably new U-joints and a new hub. If this is the case, the quote is high, but take it to another garage and get them to give you a written quote with an itemized list of what they intend to replace.

There are lots of on-line shops that sell drive shaft parts, drive shafts, hubs, etc., for the Dakota, but check with your local parts supplier like NAPA or equivalent and see what they would have & what their price is (if you don't feel comfortable making these repairs yourself, it would be pointless getting individual prices for the parts other than to see what the garage is roughly charging for labor). If one or both of your drive shafts are really "shot", you should have the garage get a used one at a local auto salvage yard & then just change the U-joints - this would be much cheaper than getting a new or re-manufactured shaft.

Here's a picture of a typical drive shaft showing all it's components. This picture shows a "flange yoke" at each end - I think the dakota shafts have 1 flange yoke at the diff and 1 splined at the transfer case, but it doesn't really matter as far as this picture is concerned. In this picture, the parts grouping we normally call the U-joint is #10 and called the "spider journal".

 

When i put my truck into 4WD it makes a really nasty noise (When moving only, it shifts fine) , and the mechanic told me my hub is bad, but also my front and back drive shaft... he charged me 65 bucks for this and i didnt even get it on paper.

When i took him for a ride to show him the noise as soon as he heard it he knew what the problem was as soon as i engaged the 4wd, this was like 2 weeks ago so i dont remember his exact words, but he said if i engage the 4wd its gonna grind my gears out?? and ill have to replace the transfer case too if i engage the 4wd to much.

Whats weird is when my trucks just in 2wd it sounds fine, other then random shaking on the freeway after 60+mph, sometimes it wont shake at all, sometimes itll start shaking really bad, its totally random.

And also i thought if your Ujoints are bad, when you shift into drive or whatever you can hear it knock? i dont hear that at all.

 

We learn best from experience. From this experience I suggest that the moral would be:

• Ask for a free written estimate - any garage worth it's salt that I've gone to won't have a problem lifting the vehicle to check things out, show you what's wrong, and write it down with a not-to-exceed price including labor & parts.
• Don't trust everything you hear, a second opinion is often worth while when it comes to spending your money. I'd suspect that $60 didn't even go into the till. His whole diagnosis, without even lifting the truck to look underneath, is suspect to me.

If the truck makes no strange noises in 2wd, I'm not sure how you could have a bad hub - the front wheels turn whether you're in 4wd or 2wd.


Since there isn't any noise in 2wd, the source of the noise must be in 4wd associated components and the major areas to look would be transfer case, drive shaft, front differential, so the rear drive shaft and all points to the rear of the truck would be off my list of "first things to check". The U-joints will make various sounds depending on how badly worn they are and this would be the first place I would look. You can crawl under your truck and have a look for yourself (with the truck TURNED OFF & parking brake ON)- grab the drive shaft and try to turn it back and forth. If the front or rear drive shaft joint is loose, you should be able to see it - have a look at that picture I posted, you'll see that there are 4 bearings associated with each joint and if the joint is good, there should be no slop when you try to move it back and forth - both yokes (remember that there are 2 yokes per joint)

should try to move together. If one yoke moves (even a bit) before the other starts to turn, you have bad bearings. Have a look and see what the joints look like and then we can take it to the next level.



Here are a couple of pictures to help you understand the simple universal joint (also known as a single cardan joint).


The first picture shows what the X with the bearings looks like - each axis of the X is attached to 1 yoke to give the joint the flex it needs. This whole assembly is shown in the second simplified picture.





Universal.jpg

 

In or out of 4wd, all of those parts turn, so far as I am aware. They just are not being pushed to turn. I would suspect U-joints, since they can flop around without power quite happily, but once you put a force on them, the bearings inside are forced to work harder and you hear them making noise.

 

my bad rear u-joint caused vibration under acceleration.