So my jeep has been making noises when accelerating from a stop--thought it may be a u-joint going out. There doesn't seem to be any play in the joints, so I don't think it is them, but I did see this. Is it bad?

 

Keeps the lube in your spline joint. Needs lubed and fixed.

 

bah. ok. local o'reilly's doesn't carry the boot... have read on other threads that you have to get it from a dealership. looks like I will have to take the shaft out to get the boot on, in which case I will probably have to also replace the u-joint closest to this? how difficult of a job is this?

 

Get a new one, and grease that ish up! I just greased mine two days ago. Yours is going to dry up pretty quick without the boot on it. And it keeps out dust and what not.

 

You may not need to replace the ujoints. Of course it is not a bad idea to do it. And it's not hard to. All it takes to drop the rear DS is to take off the 4 bolts at the yoke and slide it off. Make sure you have your parking brake on if you're not on a flat surface (I learned that the hard way this weekend as I got ran over by my XJ).

 

pull the driveshaft when you get the boot, rotate all the joints and see if any bind or stick, if they do take it to a local repair shop and let them put them in if you dont feel comfy doing it.

 

http://www.quadratec.com/products/52304_0900.htm

 

Quadratec says 1-2 hour install time. Haha