Drive Shaft bolts!

[FMJ]

Found something interesting today. I was prepping this truck for sale, and during the bolt tight check between the tranny and t-case I found these non-shouldered bolts on the left, 3 were installed on the intermediate shaft and 1 on the front axle drive shaft. The correct shouldered bolts/nuts are on the right. This truck came straight from the NM NG, just a heads up to anyone who cares. As you can see the bolts/nuts are different, and were causing a slight vibration because they were mixed in with the correct bolts, slightly different weights, after I swapped out the bolts for the correct ones, the vibration was gone.

Ed

 

[Blood_of_Tyrants]

I'm not surprised. They are loose a surprising amount of the time, too.

 

[DieselBob]

Interesting find.

 

[AceHigh]

"Hey, Sarge, can I just use these bolts instead of the shoulder ones?"

"Sure, why not?"

 

[emr]

This is a good post, very over looked things to do on these tactcal vehicles is tighten ALL nuts and bolts, and check for things that do not look right, that is a good find, every one with a deuce should know the condition of that jack shaft all the time, it can come thru the floor and crack the tranns huosing, it happend to a kid in the MTA, we always say make sure u tighten all bolts, well he said wow those need to be tight too...that had to be loud and scary.....just sayin, good reminder post about good PM...

 

[dittle]

When replacing a seal on the X-fer case on my deuce I found all of my driveline bolts were loose. Tightened them all down and checked them after 500 miles, non have came loose but I'm going to pull them all and loctite them this spring.

 

[rideni]

I lost one of my drive shaft bolts at one point tightened the others and replaced the missing one

 

[ALFA2]

FMJ, thanks for the heads up, that explains the vibration, even though the drive-line bolts were tight.
Up on a closer look I found 3 different type and size of bolts in the flanges, but all were tight. I will replace the wrong ones and see how it goes.

Thanks.

ALFA2

 

[rbeasley66]

I found my jack shaft with one missing bolt, six really loose bolts and one bolt almost tight. I saw the bolts were to short for the lock nuts, as the lock part of the nut was not on the bolt when I tightened them down. Had to buy eight longer bolts and new lock nuts to make the job right. Oh, and the winch had no oil in it, the winch netural lock was out of adjustment so the PTO shaft was turning all the time, a front wheel lug nut was finger loose and the tire pressures ranged from 10 psi to 30 psi. A close, bumper to bumper inspection is so important after buying a Duece and before putting it on the road. And all through the year as well.