241 J Transfer Case

Yes. I've never tried to have one replaced but I've heard by the time that's done and the u joints and yoke are paid for it often ends up comparable to the cost of a new shaft.

Thanks, I will pull the shaft tomorrow and inspect. I think I have u joints in my spares box. If I’m concerned I may pull the front shaft for the drive out and back.
 
What are your recommendations on servicing that joint before my trip to Colorado in 2 weeks?

Replace the centering ball and ujoints on the front shaft.
 
100k is about when I "rebuilt" the front shaft on my 99. 3 new u joints and a centering yoke, 30 minutes with a hammer and a couple of sockets and it was good to go. If the centering pin is excessively worn, just abort before you install the new parts so you can return them and buy a new shaft from Tom Wood's.

A centering yoke is only about $85. 3 Ujoints will run you about $75. That's way cheaper than buying a new shaft from TW. My .02c.

The work doesn't take long as you mentioned.
 
A centering yoke is only about $85. 3 Ujoints will run you about $75. That's way cheaper than buying a new shaft from TW. My .02c.

The work doesn't take long as you mentioned.

Absolutely. I would only advocate a new shaft if the centering pin also needs replaced in addition to the $150ish in u joints and yoke.
 
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A centering yoke is only about $85. 3 Ujoints will run you about $75. That's way cheaper than buying a new shaft from TW. My .02c.

The work doesn't take long as you mentioned.

I disassembled the dc end last night. Everything looks pretty good except the grease is liquid and very black. Small amounts of play so I ordered three Spicer joints and the centering yoke. Parts should be here this weekend.
 
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I disassembled the dc end last night. Everything looks pretty good except the grease is liquid and very black. Small amounts of play so I ordered three Spicer joints and the centering yoke. Parts should be here this weekend.

Smart to rebuild the whole thing. As long as the centering pin is solid you should be good to go. Fun project
 
Smart to rebuild the whole thing. As long as the centering pin is solid you should be good to go. Fun project

After the driveshaft and reinstalling skids the Jeep should be good to go for my trip to Ouray in 2 weeks. Cant wait.
 
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After the driveshaft and reinstalling skids the Jeep should be good to go for my trip to Ouray in 2 weeks. Cant wait.

Ouray is gorgeous. I haven’t been since I was a teenager. We camped up on the hillside overlooking the town below. My mom had gone into one of the grocery stores the day before and bought some canned biscuits after we swam in some hot springs. When we woke up the next morning the dew was fresh and a few deer were foraging. My mom put some apple filling in the biscuit dough and made apple pies. What a great day. Crazy how all that came back.

You can’t forget memories. 🤣

Hope you have a great trip!
 
I cut a socket yoke in half and took some pictures today, in response to this post. This is something that is unfortunately pretty common. Most people don't realize that there is a grease fitting for the center ball. The fitting is almost always hidden and inaccessible when the shaft is installed and proper lubrication is not possible without removing the drive shaft. This means the guy at the lube shop or the owner of the Jeep will think that they grease all the fittings but they actually only greased all the visible fittings. The sad irony is that the fitting they are missing is the one that most needs grease due to it's design. Take a look at the anatomy of the center ball below. The better people understand how something works the better they will understand how to properly take care of it. To the OP: Most of the time this does result in a broken transfer case, I'm sorry to see that you were the recipient of some serious bad luck.

grease flow through center ball.jpg
 
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I cut a socket yoke in half and took some pictures today, in response to this post. This is something that is unfortunately pretty common. Most people don't realize that there is a grease fitting for the center ball. The fitting is almost always hidden and inaccessible when the shaft is installed and proper lubrication is not possible without removing the drive shaft. This means the guy at the lube shop or the owner of the Jeep will think that they grease all the fittings but they actually only greased all the visible fittings. The sad irony is that the fitting they are missing is the one that most needs grease due to it's design. Take a look at the anatomy of the center ball below. The better people understand how something works the better they will understand how to properly take care of it. To the OP: Most of the time this does result in a broken transfer case, I'm sorry to see that you were the recipient of some serious bad luck.

View attachment 348499

can you go into why TW shafts are provided with a greasable centering yoke without any option (that I know of) for a non-greasable? Both my TJ's had Spicer non-greasable yokes and were replaced at or after 100k miles, completely preventatively, without any symptom of imminent failure.

I can actually get to the fittings on my TW shafts without removal, by using a narrow steel needle to reach it, and rolling the Jeep to orient the shaft to maximize the gap between the link yoke and the socket yoke and point the grease fitting in the right direction. On the front I actually point it toward the driver side so I can see the fitting in the gap between the frame and body (with a 1.25" body lift).

PXL_20220331_214304939.jpg
 
can you go into why TW shafts are provided with a greasable centering yoke without any option (that I know of) for a non-greasable? Both my TJ's had Spicer non-greasable yokes and were replaced at or after 100k miles, completely preventatively, without any symptom of imminent failure.

I can actually get to the fittings on my TW shafts without removal, by using a narrow steel needle to reach it, and rolling the Jeep to orient the shaft to maximize the gap between the link yoke and the socket yoke and point the grease fitting in the right direction. On the front I actually point it toward the driver side so I can see the fitting in the gap between the frame and body (with a 1.25" body lift).

Yes of course. When parts are non-greaseable I think of it not as something that doesn't need to be greased and more as something that can't be greased. Without them telling me directly I've always assumed that the reason the factory shafts are non-greaseable is because they know that they can't rely on the off-the-lot new Jeep purchaser to grease everything, they want things to last as long as possible without any maintenance. Where all that goes out the window is when people modify their Jeeps (install a lift), thereby changing the operating parameters of the drive shaft. Principally I'm talking about angles. For sake of demonstration, lets say the angle doubles. Two things happen. One is that the movement of that centering ball doubles, which should cut the lifespan in half. So that 100,000 mile potential wear life is now 50,000 miles. The other thing is that the shaft at full axle droop is going to need to flex further. The non-greaseable centering balls have a rubber boot around them, on the weld yoke / pin side of things. The shape of the socket yoke is also different. These things limit the maximum flexibility of the centering ball, making it more likely to bind at full droop and more likely to be damaged as a result.
 
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What is a good grease recommendation for something that sees the high spinning RPMs? I've used Lucas red n tacky before only to find out it isnt a good grease for a driveshaft application
 
Two other things to note. This looks to be a JK. Either that or a TJ with a JK drivetrain put in it. The shaft that's in there is definitely aftermarket. Not one of ours but very similar. The aftermarket shaft in the photo uses a greaseable socket yoke. I don't keep track of what everyone else is doing all the time but I'm pretty sure that everyone who makes this type of shaft uses a greaseable socket yoke. Even Dana/Spicer, they are supposed to be the ones who come up with all the best designs and products, who write the rules on how things are supposed to be made, and even they use a greaseable centering ball in their 1310 double cardan JK replacement shafts. It's not a perfect design though, it's the best (in my opinion) option for a lifted Jeep.
 
What is a good grease recommendation for something that sees the high spinning RPMs? I've used Lucas red n tacky before only to find out it isnt a good grease for a driveshaft application

I don't know why red and tacky wouldn't be a good grease to use for the centering ball. I honestly think whoever told you that might not have known exactly what they were talking about. That's the nice way of saying I think they are full of shit. :) But I also don't claim to be an expert on grease. But we've asked an expert on grease what type of grease we should be using for this particular application. The answer was to use a grease with a calcium sulfonate additive. I don't know why or what calcium sulfonate does, but the guy seemed to know what he was talking about so I trust him. Also, this was an experienced person at a grease company, not just some kid behind the counter at O'Reilly's. We currently use Dynalife 220 #2. Before that we used Prolong brand grease, also with calcium sulfonate. The only reason we switched from prolong to Dynalife is supply shortages. We couldn't get Prolong for something like 6 months or more. I found an insightful explanation on the internet. It looks like lithium grease (red and tacky) is best for heat and calcium sulfonate, though still has a high heat rating, does best for load life. https://www.bellperformance.com/bel...lfonate-grease-the-workhorses-of-the-industry
 
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What is a good grease recommendation for something that sees the high spinning RPMs? I've used Lucas red n tacky before only to find out it isnt a good grease for a driveshaft application


Honestly I don't know why red and tacky wouldn't be a good grease to use for the centering ball. I honestly think whoever told you that might not have known exactly what they were talking about. That's the nice way of saying I think they are full of shit. :) But I also don't claim to be an expert on grease. But we've asked an expert on grease what type of grease we should be using for this particular application. The answer was to use a grease with a calcium sulfonate additive. I don't know why or what calcium sulfonate does, but the guy seemed to know what he was talking about so I trust him. Also, this was an experienced person at a grease company, not just some kid behind the counter at O'Reilly's. We currently use Dynalife 220 #2. Before that we used Prolong brand grease, also with calcium sulfonate. The only reason we switched from prolong to Dynalife is supply shortages. We couldn't get Prolong for something like 6 months or more. I found an insightful explanation on the internet. It looks like lithium grease (red and tacky) is best for heat and calcium sulfonate, though still has a high heat rating, does best for load life. https://www.bellperformance.com/bel...lfonate-grease-the-workhorses-of-the-industry

I've been using Redline CV2, which apparently has calcium sulfonate, but not through any effort of mine as I didn't know what calcium sulfonate was until reading this post. If I'm understanding correctly, it's just what forms the base of the grease, like it's lithium, or it's calcium sulfonate, or whatever.

There is a lot of stuff floating around on the internet that moly is bad in high speed applications, other stuff that says yeah but high speed is 10k+RPM so nothing in our world needs to worry about it, then even other stuff that said moly is for sliding interfaces and is bad for rolling elements like balls and needles because it's so slippery that the rollers don't roll and just wear a flat spot. I'm not a tribologist so it's hard for me to make heads or tails of it, but I think if there was a problem with using a product like CV2 in a u-joint or centering ball, we'd probably know about widespread part failures considering how many moly greases there are that are labeled for wheel bearing an U-joint use.
 
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I honestly don't think anyone ever has failures because they used the wrong grease, they have failures because they didn't use any at all. Whether that is due to a lack of knowledge or otherwise. You can see in the OP's photos that the center ball is dry. As is the case with almost all of these failures I've ever seen. When there is grease on a worn center ball it is usually a "too little too late" scenario in which the damage has already been done or the decent into full on failure has already been initiated. The only wrong kind of grease to use is no grease. There are advantages to some over others but I think of it as which one is most right, not which grease is wrong.

When people grease their drive shaft after it has started chirping:
gandalf.png
 
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