Easy Maintenance to do- Grease drive shaft U-Joints using the 5 Zerks on a 2nd Gen 2014 TRD OR DCSB

Bought her used and now we have 26,800 on the odometer. Read ALL of the lengthy "grease your u-joints" posts to make sure I would get it right first pass. The job was really easy.

I found 5 Zerks total and used a grease gun with a 14oz Tube Lucas Oil Red n Tacky #2.

Rolled the truck so that the 3 rear shaft Zerks were facing down.
Put her in Park, set the brake, and chocked the wheels. ...On a slightly inclined driveway.

Cleaned the Zerks and wiped them dry. Connected the grease gun using a flexible hose and standard fitting. Filled each zerk 2-5 pumps until the new red grease seeped out the seals. Wiped the spider and joint clean.

Pulled the chocks, engaged 4x4H,
And rolled so the front shaft Zerks were facing down. Put in her park, set brake, chalked the wheels. Edit: In (2HI) the front shaft can be rotated by hand to access the Zerks.

Removed the heat shield below the front shaft zerk by removing the two horizontal 12mm bolts with and extension socket.

Cleaned the front shaft Zerks, hooked up the grease gun hose and pumped away. Wiped them clean.

Replaced the heat shield. Made sure it's seated correctly on installation.

The front most Zerk was really tough to get my grease fitting on and seated well. It was at an awkward shallow angle. I had to really wedge the gun tip in there to get a seal. That one got kinda messy and first few pumps gooed it up a bit.

Went and drove around easy in 4x4 for a few miles, got some beers, came home and played fetch with the dog.

Hope anyone with a 2nd generation 2014 TRD Off Road DCSB can benefit from my experience.

 

Good write up. The front shaft can be turned by hand if you park it in 2WD. That way you can get the best angle to get on the zerk.

 

Thanks for the tip! Good to know for the next greasing.

 

Good write up - that's exactly how I did it, except I left it in 2HI the whole time and spun the front driveshaft by hand. Only correction I'd make is that you "chocked the wheels" not "chalked the wheels".

If you use a rigid 6" extension for the grease gun instead of the flexible hose it makes greasing the front u-joints much easier.

 

Wish my 2WD 2015 PreRunner Tacoma had zerks. There are none.

Wifes 2014 4 Runner 2WD SR5 has one on each end of the drive shaft.

 

Thanks for the edit. Fixed the post. I'll spin the front shaft by hand next time. Really thankful for the TW help to get this done.

 

Did this today after my 15k service at dealer, all fittings had been greased except, surprise, the one behind the heat shield that needs to be removed. Was caked with grime. Brake cleaner and rag and had to repeat cleaner/rag to get the fitting shiny. Thanks stealership. I had hella problems with my driveshaft, u joints, center bearing on my 2007, going to be proactive on the 2015, grease at each oil x......

 

Any pics of the front drive shaft zerks? I checked twice last time I was under there and couldn't feel any?

 

I'll look tomorrow try get some pics but on my 2015 I found 2 one up front the other behind the heat sheild. Could very well have missed more I looked and felt around pretty good.... one is a bit ch and u can't twist the grease nozzle to tighten because of lack of clearence... first the grease gooped around the fitting then I held it hard against the zerk and it went into the joint, evidenced by the grease coming out of the seals.

 

Hm, dunno how I missed it. Are they on the joint "corners" kinda like the rest of the rear drive shaft? Or are they hidden inside the joints? I just felt those little cotter-pin type clips on all 4 corners.

I'll try to remember to post pics if I make it under this weekend, doubt that'll happen though.

 

Ya one of the fronts is tucked inside the spider joint making access difficult and making it hard if not impossible to tighten the gun nozzle, I used force to push and hold the nozzle onto the fitting until the grease stopped building up around the fitting/ nozzle area, and started going into the joint, I could see the grease coming out of the seals so I know it was working. Lots of paper towels, a dirty sweatshirt, latex gloves, and goggles for the brake cleaner, which shines up the zerks prepping them for greasing.

 

Damn. I already hate doing the ones on the bottom of my upper arms. For some reason this grease gun I bought the coupler sticks to anything I put it on. I have to literally loosen it up to take it off the zerk.

 

Do you have aftermarket UCAs? ---- do the stocks have a zerk?

 

Icon tube uppers.

Stock uppers do not.

 

Cool that's what I thought thx dude

 

Ps apperently the zerk that services the slip yoke should not be greased excessively or it could damage the seal. It's mentioned in other threads....I just give it one pump

 

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...nd-gen-2014-trd-or-dcsb.426536/#post-12261619

I've been greasing my driveshaft because I had lots of problems on my 07... glad I did it today as I mentioned one zerk wasn't serviced at all and most took 3 or 4 pumps to purge the old grease, one took 5 and only a small amount of grease came out before my new grease showed, leading me to believe that it was not packed properly from the factory.... I intend to grease at every oil x for the life of the truck, as I drive them to 200k miles+

 

Any idea how many and location of zerkS on a 4x4 96 reg cab? Diagram would be awesome. Thanks

 

I wouldn't know, I would suggest searching the forums , try key words like the ones in your post above and if you don't come up with anything, start a thread asking the question...

 

Best way to find out is to crawl underneath and start looking. Do that and count what you can; then move truck fwd/back and take another look.