So was out wheeling at Rausch when my front half shaft decided to blow up. Driving home now, hopefully it won't cause anymore damage. Should say this is my first trail breakage too.

Glad you were able to make it home still!

Should I be looking into changing/fixing anything else while replacing the half shaft? I don't know if I'm going to attempt it myself, it's getting a little cold to under the truck... but wanted to get a list going. I've never repacked the grease in the bearings either, it's probably time to do that too.

If anyone can think of anything else please let me know. My mechanical know how is limited but follow instructions fairly well.

Yeah I agree do the bearings and half shaft that should be fine.

Do the bearings while you are in there, but the half shafts are really easy to replace. I have a thread in here somewhere. First time, you can do it in an hour or so.

So I started on replacing the half shaft after finally getting a very stubborn skid plate bolt off this afternoon. Then hit a problem.. here what I did until I hit the little problem:

- jacked the front end up, removed the wheels
- Removed the hub (6mm allen)
- Removed the 6 12mm bolts on the diff side of the axel - that took a while since the brake wouldn't stop the broken half shaft from turning
- removed the snap ring, lock washer, lock nut etc... since I was going to repack the bearing (there were a lot of things on there)
- removed brake caliper & took off the rotor

PROBLEM - according to what I read, the axel should slide right out..... well, it didn't. I got the diff side out no problem but the axel that goes into the wheel side just wont come out... the LCA is in the way.

I removed the tie rod end, didn't help. Was going to try removing the LCA but it was too dark to continue.

Do I need to remove either the LCA or UCA to get the axel out & new one in? Anything I should watch out for?

Going to try this again next weekend.. bumming rides to work this week. Sucks.

I removed my UCA to get out the half shaft then I put the truck in 4wd to stop th half shaft from spinning

Thanks Romeo. Should've taken you up on that offer & saved me some of the pain. I'll remove the UCA next weekend & get it finished. At least it gives me some more real hands on experience

Spent the afternoon replacing the broken half shaft. Found out that one of the rings inside the hub is also cracked. The shocks are looking pretty nasty too. So looks like the hub & shocks will be next.

On my test drive, kept hearing a weird whine about 30mph but stops when the driver side front wheel falls into a rut. Must have rattled something lose when the truck was jacked up.

Here's a pic of the broken half shaft & the shiny new one.

Repacked both front wheel bearing and all seems good now. No weird noises.

Nice job. Too bad it was a pain with a lot of setbacks