Wheel Joint retainer "Fix"

Well, it finally happened to me. I'm 150 miles into driving home from a great day of wheeling and "Bang" and "Knock...knock... knock". So I pull over and find that one of the caps for the passenger side wheel joint is missing. The knocking sound is the u-joint hitting the bolt head on the knuckle. So I get out some zip ties and make a big bundle under the stub axle yoke to center the inner shaft and finish driving home.

I examine the stub shaft and find that there is nothing wrong with the fitment on the holes and the ears are true. However, when I replaced the joint, I did notice that the caps went in pretty easy. Easy in=easy out. Hmmm...

I remember quite a few folks told me that they tack weld on their wheel joint caps, so this is not a new idea by any means, but it is cheaper than replacing your axle shafts so you can have "Full Circle" Clips.

So here's the picture:


As you can see, I tack welded the caps to the ears. I did that for all 4 caps.
The caps still have on the OEM style retainers on the inside, but now have a little extra bit of protection to keep them from spinning off the clips and getting spit out. If you need to replace the U-Joint again, simply grind off the weld, replace the U-Joint, then weld 'em back up again.

HTH somebody!

Why didn't you just grind them out for full circle c clips? Mine also got that loose where you could spin the caps, my full clips are the only reason I didn't lose caps. I was worried they can't support full load being the caps are not tight, so I got some chromos.

Good question!

I guess the reason is that I was too lazy to do that.

I don't stock e-clips (Circle clips) and wanted the Jeep to be functional in 20 minutes. So I tack welded it up and used the Jeep less than 20 minutes later to pull down a 30 ft branch which was hanging from the tree in the front yard