• NAXJA is having its 18th annual March Membership Drive!!!
    Everyone who joins or renews during March will be entered into a drawing!
    More Information - Join/Renew
  • Welcome to the new NAXJA Forum! If your password does not work, please use "Forgot your password?" link on the log-in page. Please feel free to reach out to [email protected] if we can provide any assistance.

quick silly question: running just stubs....

DeftwillP

NAXJA Forum User
Location
Round Rock TX
If, for whatever reason, I needed to just run stubs: is it okay to run a stub with a u-joint in it? Or should it be just the bare stub? I can see the u joint flopping around I suppose and causing a lot of noise and eventually wrecking the joint/possibly elongating the holes. But I didn't know for sure.
 
I don't see where it would hurt anything... Obviously, you'd want to take the unused caps off... It's not going to flop around enough to hurt anything. Doubt you'd even notice it.

But, if you could, it makes more sense to remove the whole thing...
 
Joint will be fine, but how are you going to seal the front diff?

You will need to remove the shaft from inside the diff or else the ears from each shaft will hit each other. You only need enough shaft to secure the unit bearings. The stub shaft (and unit bearings) from a 2WD XJ would be a better choice.
 
i drove around for awhile with jiust stubs, no ujoints, (from TX to NorCal) pull the inner shafts and drain the lube from the diff and stuff some rags in the tube. I was going to use some 2wd unit bearing but the knuckles/bearings/brakes were all different in my case.
 
A "Limp Home" Trail repair would be:

Pull the inner shaft and plug with rags ( shop rags, paper towels, whatever ).
Leave the outer shaft (nutted and torqued) in the bearing.

The gear lube will only leak down to the bottom of the tube level in the diff. The rags are to keep dirt out and leaking on Off-Camber stuff.

Retaining the outer shaft will keep the Unit Bearing together for the ride home. Don't forget the outer shaft(!), people have died when the Unit Bearing separated on the highway.

I have driven home on a stock shaft that broke on the trail... It tore up the seals something awful. Not recommended due to safety reasons.

BTW: If you decide to use this method while waiting for a set of gears, it's OK. I would leave the U-Joint out of the equation though, why dirty up a good one?
 
The ujoint wont cause any problems, but the unused caps will fly off, remove em... the bearing surfaces of the trunnions are going to get wrecked.
 
Back
Top