Hi, I’m Mike from 1A Auto. We’ve been selling auto parts for over 30 years!
Raise and support your vehicle. The driveshaft and the transfer case to the front axle is located here and connects to the front differential here. Before removing the front driveshaft, mark the two components, so that when we reinstall it, we can line them back up the way they came apart. Spray these bolts as best you can with some rust penetrant. Use the 11 millimeter wrench to break these free.
I'm also going to brace the driveshaft with a pry bar. I like this spot. Now that I've broken these free with a regular wrench, I'm going to use an 11 millimeter ratcheting wrench to speed up the process. These are pretty loose now, I'll take them out with my fingers and place those aside so you don't lose them. You need to get the driveshaft out of the U-joint, so I'm just going to pry up on it a little bit. This one's pretty stuck. I'm going to use the large punch and a hammer to try to free it up. There it is, just had to free it up. They get rusted together.
I'm going to spray some more rust penetrant in there. There it is, just had to work it out. This driveshaft can actually be pushed backwards, and then we'll spin it out of the U-joint. With the driveshaft in one hand, I will take a large pry bar or a large flat-bladed screwdriver. I'm going to work it under this boot and try to push it up as I spin the driveshaft. There is a lip it has to get over. I think I've got it. Once the lip is off of there, we can slide the driveshaft out of the transfer case.
Using a 15 millimeter socket, remove the 15 millimeter bolts holding the skid plate on. There is an electrical connector for the transfer case actuator motor on the top of the transfer case. It should be clipped in. Our clip is actually broken, so I can move the connector down. I'm going to push this to unlock it. Pull it apart. Remove the three 15 millimeter bolts holding the actuator in. You may need to use different length extensions with your 15 millimeter socket to reach all the bolts. That one came out. Just had to tug on that one a little bit. Now we just need to maneuver this out. It lifts off the transfer case, and we'll pull it down.
I'm going to wipe the area where the transfer case went, make sure it's clean of all dirt. If you did not put the transfer case in neutral before going underneath the vehicle, now would be the time to put it in neutral. The driveshaft here is locked. Truck's in two-wheel drive. If you reach up to this little actuator, there's a keyway that should be facing the ground or parallel with the ground. That will be in neutral, so we're going to turn it just counterclockwise. Very easy to turn with my fingers. Now this keyway is facing the bottom, and this driveshaft will spin freely.
The transfer case is in neutral. The new actuator motor is set up to start in neutral, so we'll line up with the three holes and the keyway, with the transfer case in neutral when you install it. This is our old transfer case actuator motor. It has a gasket on it. We can reuse this gasket. We're going to clean it up. It just pulls off. I'll put that aside for now.
As you can see, compared to the new transfer case actuator motor from 1AAuto.com, they are identical: same style connector; same three mounting holes; same motor. Over here in the new part, it ships with this plastic piece in here to lock it in place. You want to remove that before you install it.
This keyway that's in here and the keyway that's in the new one is in a little bit different position. The new one should be already set up in neutral. That's why we set our transfer case to neutral. This part looks really good. It'll bolt up and work great for us. I'm just going to use some glass cleaner, clean up our gasket.
Install our gasket under the new actuator motor. Figure out the way it lines up. When reinstalling the actuator motor for the transfer case, there's a dowel pin at the top. I've placed a little bit of grease all over it. Just make sure that you slide the top hole on the actuator motor over the dowel pin when installing it. Slide this up into position. I have to move some stuff around the connector. Try to keep the gasket in place. Basically just feel around until it gets over the keyway and the dowel. It should slide on there with not much resistance. Start reinstalling the top bolt. Get the bottom bolt captured. I got my 15 millimeter socket ratchet.
Start by tightening the top bolt first. Bring this bolt down just so it's tight. We will torque these at the very end. Tighten the bottom bolt. Tighten the middle one until it stops. Torque these to 15 foot pounds. Torque the bottom one and the middle one. Reconnect the electrical connector. We've got our body side connector here, another connector on the actuator motor. Plug them in together. Make sure they're locked. Our new connector comes with a new push lock tab to hold it in place. The old one is broken off. Up here on our little bracket in the top of the transfer case, I'm going to take some side cutting pliers and just cut it out of there and stick our new connector back where it belongs. I just cut it off with some side cutting pliers, and the other bit fell off. We'll take our new one, push it up. Clip it right back in the harness hole there where it's supposed to go. Reinstall the skid plate. You get all the bolts caught. Take the 15 millimeter socket extension. Tighten these down.
So we're going to line up our match-marks that we made earlier: this one here to this one here. But first, I'm going to slide it up over the cross-member. Guide the driveshaft into the transfer case to line up the splines, and it'll slide right in. Push it in, push the boot over. It'll go into a little channel, it'll lock. That's secure there. Now we can go back up, putting our front driveshaft into the differential. We may need to spin this around, but just be aware that we need to match up our lines that we made before. See if I can get this in here.
This actually has a little bit of play. You can go backwards a bit. Made this up like this. Just kind of move the U-joint around. Okay, so over here now we've got our match-marks, they're in the same spot. We're going to pull the driveshaft out and seat it into the little U-joint cups. Reinstall our bolts and the brackets that hold the U-joint on. Brace the driveshaft with a pry bar. Torque these bolts to 19 foot-pounds. Driveshaft is reinstalled.
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