I had a small vibration in my jeep so I took it in to have the drive shaft balanced. They tell me it's 100 other things as well as the drive shaft. $350 later I leave the shop and the vibration is worse than when i brought it in. I tool it back and they poked around in it for about an hour until they called me back there to look at something. Apparently, the drive shaft was somehow damaged and it bent the output shaft on my transfer case so it's going to cost me another $400 to fix that. Does anyone have any ideas how to make this a cheaper fix? I didnt even want to spend the original $40 to get the drive shaft balanced in the first place. I am fairly handy with my tools but I havent worked on this thing yet past replacing the water pump. Is putting in a new transfer case my best option? Is the output shaft something that can be replaced on its own, and if so, would it have damaged any of the other components in the transfer case? Sorry for the long post but im super pissed at these guys for not seeing this in the first place and wasting my money. Any help would be great. Thanks

 

Go to your local piknpull and get a used one if you have one close by,cost me $85 here. If not look for one on ebay or craigslist.

 

I was considering that too. How hard are they to put in? I'm searching for transfer case install and not coming up with anything too useful up here. I have seen a few up here in the for sale section and on craigslist as well for $100-$200, not too bad. Is the bent part on mine mean the end for it? The guy I bought it from said that it was put in not long ago and it looks like its in pretty good condition.

 

They are not hard of you have the tools,mainly a trany jack,assuming you have an auto it can be hard to seperate it from the trany,but if you disconnect the linkage,wiring,rear driveshaft and lower the back of the trany down you can get to all the bolts pretty easy.

 

i dunno if you have considered this but when i worked at my old shop (Desert Rat in AZ) when sombody brought in an odd problem like that and we didnt fix it initially we would take the price of the original fix off of the new price if it was higher, (300$=no fix actual problem 400$-300$=100$ final cost). and if im not mistaken that is a policy for most shops, just throwin that out there.

 

Thanks for the info jeepkevin. That sounds like a very reasonable thing to call them up and propose. I am contemplating stopping payment on the credit card, but thats a real jerk move, maybe I should call them and tell them I will if they dont do something to fix it. I feel bad because I personaly know mechanics and it's not like they're magicians that instantly know whats wrong with my car, but at the same time as a customer I should have some sort of guarentee that if I am going to spend the $350 or whatever it may be that I get an acceptable service for the payment made. I'm sure they did a great job doing the work that they billed me for, but it was the wrong work to do. It doesnt help that the car has 17x,xxx miles on it so the stuff probably already needed to be replaced anyway, but at the same time, I didnt ask them to fix everything that was wrong with my car, just the vibration..... Any thoughts?

 

The only question I have is,did you take the driveshaft to them to balance,or did you take your xj to them because it has a vibration?
Makes a difference.

 

I understand what you meant about them being magicians n all, but ill tell you what my old boss used to say "your a mechanic, your job is to find a fix for a break, not to find a maybe." the dude was like 50 when he told me that but all it means is that is is their job to find out what exactly is wrong and fix that not anything else. if the mechanic was not looking hard enough at what it may be then it should all fall back on them and not you.

 

A SYE Kit might be the solutions

you said your output shaft was bent?

sye kit comes with HD output shaft and housing,, If you gonna pay that money to bring it to stock setting, might as well get the SYE kit for that price

 

I like that thinking jeepkivin, they do have a job to do and if they dont do it to the customer satisfaction they should make it right. Hopefuly they will do the right thing and take care of this for me. I am thinking of going in there with a new transfer case to be put in and tell them i'll give them the $20hr for the actual mechanics labor not the $95 crap they usually charge just so they're not loosing money from it. I am not familiar with an sye kit? What exactly does it do? I have seen output shafts for sale on ebar for pretty cheap, has anyone ever changed one out before? I would like to find another solution other than just replacing the tc if possible.

 

i would like to see this "BENT" output...i find that hard to believe...you probally have a bad bearing or two in the transfer case.....

 

pull all the internals out with it still in the car...and replace em.

 

Well, they had it up on the rack, when the driveshaft turned the part connected to the driveshaft that goes into the tc is bent about an inch out of alignment. I guess its possible that its just at a bad angle wherever it connects inside the tc, but ive never worked on a transfer case so I dont really know much about it.

 

than in that case it is probally cheaper/faster for you to pull one from a JY and swap it.

 

ok here is one detain i really couldnt gather fro what you said, is it the actual shaft inside the transfer case that is bent or the outer shaft with the U shape that actually attaches to the driveshaft?