TheMighty'67

i went and bought a needle grease zert to lube up the front drive shaft, and realized that it is a pain. Correct me if im wrong, but do you slide the neddle under the rubber seal around the bearing cap itself to insert the grease, because my didn't want to take hardly any grease.

thanks
Dayton

djbikeman

You don't slide the needle under the cap seal. There is grease port in the joint. This thread shows a picture of where you need to grease:

https://www.dieseltruckresource.com/...ont+driveshaft.

dieselwill

I had to bend the very end my tapered greese fitting to get it to line up correctly in the zerk, still is a pain. I had the same problem on my '03 no one in the dealership could get it lubed . Never tried the small needle.

J BODY

They didn't have the lubed driveshaft in 03.

notrader

took my 08 in at 12k for oil change & lube. the dealership kept telling me that there was no grease fitting for the front shaft. and this is after showing them the diagram on the radiator cross brace under the hood, that tells them to grease the front drive shaft joint and the type grease. they kept saying that there was no fitting. I came home and printed off a picture of it from this site and took it back to the dealership and showed it to them and then they went to their computer and asked for all the lubrication point on my truck, using my vin and it showed the fitting. they finally found the fitting but didn' t have a gun to fit it. going to have to get one off the tool truck and will lube my truck "next time". they said that they had never lubed one of these ujoints. one guy even stated that he had replaced a lot of those ujoints, but had never seen that fitting before. I can't imagine why he had to replace all of those ujoints, lack of grease maybe?

carpenterje

Another reason I try to avoid the dealerships.

Thundercloud

Can you just replace "fisheye" zerk fitting with a normal easy to reach zerk?

Jim W

No, you can not replace this fitting. A normal fitting would be damage or knocked off by the motion of the drive shaft and would unblance the motion of the u-joint as it spins.
This style of fitting and u-joint have been around longer then I can remeber. I had this style of u-joint and fitting on a 1974 Jeep Cherokee, 1979 Jeep Cherokee Cheif and my son's Jeep Wangler in the 90's.

Navy7797

I had read in the owners manual about this fitting never did see it until this post. Went and looked today and there is was right in front of me. Sprayed a little brake cleaner and it showed up like a bight light. Ordered 5 needle grease injectors today off the net, auto parts didn't stock the correct ones.
Thanks Mighty67 for starting this thread, I may have never greased it.

bansh-eman

Make sure that once you find it, you mark the joint with a perm marker so it doesn't escape you in the future!

DWRDodge6.7

Yikes!!! I can't believe that they'd admit to to not knowing. Time to change dealers. I have and do use both the pointed tube bent to a curve and permanently mounted to a mini grease gun. This leaves one hand free to move the drive shaft as you feed the grease to it. The true needle works well on a regular gun with a flex hose, if you grind the angled point off, slightly round the edges and bend the needle to a slight curve.

Navy7797

I greased the shaft today and it was easy when the drive shaft gets lined up right, painted mine yellow at the zert. Ground the sharp end off the needle and it went straight into the fitting. Must be a small check ball in there because I felt a spring pushing back on the needle. Used a flexable hose type gun, on my back in the drive.

nelrod

Did mine yesterday and marked it when I got through. I'm somewhat ashamed to admit I just took out the 4 bolts holding the shaft on since I was in no mood for aggravation. At least next time I won't have to do that as now it is marked.