RE driveshaft - grease collar coming off??

Hey have any of you guys seen this happen before? When I grease my RE driveshaft today I noticed that the grease collar was being pushed back with each squirt of the grease gun. This has me concerned because I don't know if this is normal and it hasn't happened before.

Today I put 10 squirts of grease in which is about what I do every 2,500 - 5,000 miles. I've had the driveshaft for a year and a half...

Should I be concerned?

Perhaps you are putting too much grease into it.
If the driveshaft is compressing, it either needs to squirt some grease out of a hole or relieve pressure somewhere. It may be pushing its own seal out when the driveshaft length compresses.

Scott

Thanks for the response. I figured it must be too much grease - I keep putting it in but it doesn't magicly disappear like it does on my stock front driveshaft...

If I kept putting grease in until the seal popped off, do you think I could take some grease out and put the seal back on? The seal is still tight - I can't move it in or out by hand, nor will it rotate...

Edit - everywhere else on the jeep if you put too much grease in it comes out somewhere. I figured that would happen the same here so I didn't realize I could be putting too much in

Just hit it back on with a hammer. The grease will come out of the hole by the end of the slip joint when it compresses.

It's looking old and cracked. The next time you do any joint work to the shaft have the cap replaced also.

mark
orgs mfg

Mark Hinkley said:

Just hit it back on with a hammer. The grease will come out of the hole by the end of the slip joint when it compresses...

Click to expand...

You are talking about the end by the u-joint right? I hope theres a hole there, but it doesn't seem like it since the grease is pushing the collar off rather than going out the other end.

At any rate I tried hitting it with a hammer but that didn't really work - can't get a solid straight on hit to it. Can't budge it by hand either. So what I did before I drove it today was I took off the zerk fitting and a bunch of grease came out (mostly the grease I put in today). With that grease out I was able to move the collar back on but only very slightly. There is still a gap. Maybe tomorrow I will try and poke around behind the u-joint and see if there is a hole there that is clogged or something.

OK I called RE and found out whats going on...

The shaft is manufactured by Dana-Spicer but assembled by a local shop. Dana-Spicer manufactures it with a hole in the pinion end for grease to escape (like my stock front driveshaft) but, according to RE they have a tendency to get water/dirt in there eventually causing problems. So their local shop plugs the hole!!!

I cannot get the cap on any further than it is now. One option I have is to drill a small hole in the end to allow grease to escape. Or what I may try first is take off the zerk again and unbolt the driveshaft from the pinion yoke and try to compress the driveshaft by hand. That hopefully will force more grease out the zerk hole so I can get the cap on again. Any more advice you guys may have would be helpful. Thanks...

Just remove the zerk as you mentioned, and compress the grease out...it'll work fine...

Ivan