My '84 D150 truck was making some tell-tale u-joint squeaking and vibration at low speeds, so I decided to replace it. Upon looking under the truck I discovered that the UJ had about 30 degrees of slop (moving from side to side inside the bearing caps) when the driveshaft was rotated by hand!! Anything more than ZERO is bad, so it needed to be replaced ASAP. The UJ was an absolute bear to remove, but it eventually popped out. Upon trying to put the new one in (normally very easy) I then realized why the original failed in the first place; the ears on the yoke were bent inward so that the holes didn't exactly point at each other. When you attempt to put a UJ into a bent yoke it immediately binds up and doesn't turn. In effect, it stops being a joint. Fudge. Soooo.... this begs the question: is it fixable? Should I attempt to bend the cast iron yoke back straight, should I use a dremel to grind out the holes so that the joint will align properly, or should the local junkyards be my next step?

 

any time you bend metal you weaken it.

junk yard time

 

Yep, and cast iron is very brittle, if you hammer on it its integrity will be lessened greatly.