1992 F-150 U-Joint and wheel bearing replacement

[jyerxa]

any grease fitting you can find under it  look around the front end, there are a few up there

I knew there'd be more.  Was hoping for specifics

True noise is not a good thing. If you hear it is too late. Metal is burning up. The troublce with my old ford ranger was the fact I did thump it pretty hard a couple times. The alignment was just assque (sp?) enough that created an imbalance to the alignment and created a subtle vibration to the drive shaft that stressed the U-joints. Whew okay, U-joints are also like fuses made to be the week point on purpose.

Your grease gun is set to fit Zirk fittings. Crawl under your truck and look at all of the linkage and ball joints for the stearing. If it has a zirk fitting grease it.  Fords have about four I can think of.

[DoubleJ]

any grease fitting you can find under it  look around the front end, there are a few up there

I knew there'd be more.  Was hoping for specifics

True noise is not a good thing. If you hear it is too late. Metal is burning up. The troublce with my old ford ranger was the fact I did thump it pretty hard a couple times. The alignment was just assque (sp?) enough that created an imbalance to the alignment and created a subtle vibration to the drive shaft that stressed the U-joints. Whew okay, U-joints are also like fuses made to be the week point on purpose.

Your grease gun is set to fit Zirk fittings. Crawl under your truck and look at all of the linkage and ball joints for the stearing. If it has a zirk fitting grease it.  Fords have about four I can think of.

I found 4 without removing the wheels.  one near the wheel on the tie rod and then one at the top of the rocker arm from the steering gear and one where the rocker arm meets the tie rod

[jyerxa]

Very cool!!! I looked this up on youtube. But sounds like you got it! 

How To Use A Grease Gun To Lube A Chassis

[Heredoggydoggy]

Sometimes to save money, car companies didn't put zirks in the joints, but usually there is a plug where you can add one, and keep them greased.  if the joints were ever replaced, they either had zirks already or had them put in.  if you can't find parts for an older vehicle, go online to LMC Truck--I got a lot of parts from them to restore my '90 Bronco II. They won't be Ford parts, but sometimes they are as good or better.  A friend of mine priced a door gasket for his '83 pickup, and nearly choked at the price.  He got one from LMC for about half the cost!

[winshooter88]

On the rear end, if you drain the oil and it has a gray metallic color to it, then you need to have the rear end flushed at the very least. This also means that there is a good chance that that carrier and pinion bearing are damaged. If the oil is not gray metallic colored then you might get lucky. I don't know about the newer Fords, but the older Ford F-150 rear ends had sealed wheel bearing and wouldn't contaminate the rear differential fluid. Chevy C-K 10 (1/2 tons) had bearings that were lubed by the differential fluid and would contaminate the rear differential bearings. The U-joints aren't that hard to replace, just make sure that you remove the bearing cap retaining rings or clips before you try to push the old joint bearing caps out. Don't know if Ford ever did it , but Chevy actually used a injected plastic u-joint retainer system. Good Luck.