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Front axle question

clunk

NAXJA Forum User
I have a toast driver side u-joint that looks to have had the bearings fall out at some point. The caps are still in the ears, but there's a ton of slop in there.

I was crawling around under there in anticipation of doing having my friend do the work this weekend, and noticed that the axleshaft has play in the housing in relation to the play in the u-joint. When I twist the axle-shaft fore/aft/up/down until the middle of the u-joint hits the caps (yes, there is that much space so the bearing must have fallen out!), I can hear the splined end of the axle-shaft clanging in the housing.

This doens't seem normal, but I'm really no expert at all. It seems that the splines should fit in pretty tightly and not be clanging around.

I havn't used 4wd much in the last 5 months, but when I have used it I occasionally have gotten a loud bang out of the front end and the 4wd feels like it dis-engages, other times it works flawlessly. Everything is smooth and sounds fine on the highway..what's most likely to have broken in there? I'm assuming I should replace the axleshaft as well, but what's could have gone boom inside the axle housing?
 
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