Hi, I searched but haven't found exactly what I'm looking for. I'm looking to replace the u joints in my 67 Firebird 400 driveshaft while I have it out. As you might suspect, there are no clips. However, every video I seem to find on the nylon seals seem to show two holes on the side of the driveshaft ears. Mine doesn't have those, but what appears to be a larger, single hole on the tip of the ears. Does this make a difference? I spent a few minutes heating it up with a MAP-Pro torch and the single dot did nothing. Maybe that wasn't long enough, but it looked like something was oozing out of the end cap - maybe I just heated up the grease. Thoughts? Advice? Thanks.
Never did a '67. But did some '68's & '69's. Just heated 'em with an acetylene torch 'til the retainer material oozed out the holes, then knocked the joints out.
I just take a large punch and hold it on the center of the U joint and hit it with 3lb hammer. You have to knock out the caps away from driveshaft holes. When you hit the center of the U joint the cap slides out of the ear. Do the same to the other side of U joint. Knock the cap out with punch. Never had to heat so not sure why you would. That will make the cap expand in the hole right?
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"...That will make the cap expand in the hole right?"
I didn't heat the caps. I heated the part of the yoke where the retainer material holes were. If you heat the yoke more than the caps, that should actually make the yoke expand more than the caps, making them easier to knock out, I assume. Anyhow, it always worked for me.
Oldskool - did your 68 and 69 have a single hole at the top or the double holes alone the side? Even after cleaning, it’s hard to tell if that bump on the end of the shaft ears is a nylon seal entry point or not. Maybe my u joints have clips on the inside. I don’t think so but hard to tell. They have the grease zerks - wondering if the 67s had them or whether this has already been replaced and I don’t see the holes in the side because they’ve already been evacuated and then filled in with grime.
I thought I remembered stuff oozing out of only one hole at a time. But it's been a long time. The video below shows it coming out of 2 holes at the same time. I assume it was injected into those holes with some sort of super duper syringe type gizzmo, with the material hot enuff to be liquid, or almost liquid. This was probably done to save money.
Thanks all. Oldksool-those were the types of videos I saw, and consistent with everything I was reading, leading me to expect to see these on my driveshaft. I didn’t see those holes on the sides of my driveshaft “ears†but it appeared I had some sort of plug at the very tups of them. Turns out I didn’t. It was just the shape of the metal. Not sure why they put little circular dots at the ends. So to close the loop on this, I cleaned things really well and found out there are no holes at all on my driveshaft. Curious as I thought all 67 FBs had that GM style set of holes. Maybe my driveshaft was replaced at some point. Turns out the clips were on the inside and covered with grime, adding to the impression I had the nylon internal clips since there were none on the outside of the u joints. Thanks all. Problem solved. Continuously learning...