Has anyone replaced the front u joint?

[tigwelder]

Hi everybody My 2003 LE with awd has developed a vibration at highways speeds when the awd is engaged,switching to 2 wheel drive eliminates it.It seems like a fairly simple thing to remove the front driveshaft and install new u joints which I suspect may be the culprit.My question is should I go with oem or aftermarket ujoints,the dealer here wants $101 dollars each but the local parts store says $24 ea.Thats a pretty big difference in price are the oems worth it?I tried a search on here and came across a few threads where guys said the aftermarket parts are not as good.Does anyone care to comment?

[jbracy7]

just buy higher quality aftermarket parts

[fleurys]

I had the same problem as you and I finally had to do the research myself... Here's the complete text I wrote about it in another forum.. Enjoy..

:


Update.... I finally changed my u-joints (4) and got rid of my bad vibration in the front...But finding u-joints for my pathfinder turned out to be a little more complicated then expected until I stumbled upon Jason Hickman of the ujointstore ( http://www.theujointstore.com ) .

I did my research before ordering and I was pretty much set on the spicer 5-153x for the front and the 5-1505x for the rear... All this was according to my phone calls to some spicer resellers and also the spicer/dana web site.... Well,, I would have been dead wrong going with this cause any of the reseller (except Jason) raised a crucial question which was "are your snap ring inside or outsite the cup of the u-joint? )

Well, I,ll be damn! The spicers were designed for outside snap rings....but my present ujoints are INSIDE... SO I would have ended up spending a good amount of money for NOTHING... It seems that many online catalog do not count for all the differences of the truck... For instance, after checking my FSM, for my year, 2001, if the truck was a manual trans, then the snap ring are outside...if it is a automatic, they are inside...all this because the manual vs automatic have diffeerent driveshafts! I couldn't believe what I was reading, but it's there.!

Obviously Jason did not rely on the catalogs only and was asking the right questions. He then proposed me the NEAPCO brand which is 100% USA made. His experience played a big role in that purchase since he has been selling/installing u-joints for many years. At one point I was looking at the precision brand made by Federal-Mogul and also the GMB brand. Jason told me that many time those have excessive play in them as the tolerances are not what they should be.... So I followed his advice and went with NEAPCO 1-449 for the front (which are greaseable) and the higher end 1-0029BF Brute Force series for the back. The brute force are made more rugged and permanently sealed with nitrite rubber. I installed them last night and the U-joints are simply perfect.. The tolerances are right on and with the snap-rings, there is simply no play in there.. It's tight and not only my driveline vibration is gone, but what I thought was tires not balanced perfectly ended being a little because of the old u-joints... My truck feels new again..

If you are looking for U-joints with good advice and very good prices , talk to that man : Jason Hickman

(By the way, Even though it seems like it, I was not paid to advertise for this company... They simply do the job with great advice and great prices... I thought it was worth mentioning, since finding good people that are ready to help and knows what they're talking about seems more and more difficult these days ! ..)

pictures:
NEAPCO 1-0449 :
NEAPCO 1-0029BF:

[tigwelder]

Thanks for both your comments and fleurys thank you for posting specific info including part numbers,I will definitely look into that.

[alexf20c]

why do you need AWD at highway speeds?