Need a Cheapie Puller

Welcome to my world WH

That is possible that they are compensating for weight pushing the truck down, but trucks are not always loaded, and this is for pto shafts also which are fixed... I wasn't planning on this getting like this, this is a great forum with a lot of knowledge and great people, I was just giving my opinion and people questioned it and Said I didn't know what I was taking about, so I had to make sure what I've been taught was true or else id be giving false opinions, I'm sorry for any hard feelings this has started

HB, I'd never heard of it till you shared. I thank you & suggest---piss on them thar thin skinned people. Not u WH:) I've only blown out 1 carrier U-joint in low-low 1st gear in the mud, but have been through my share of front wheel 4X4 joints--of course I work the crap out of my trucks or at least I used to.

Lol well I'm not saying that everyone's u joints are gonna start blowing apart, but for the back yard mechanics altering things around the farm and what not, its not good to have it perfectly straight, and at 2,000-3,000 rpms the difference from 0 too 1 degree is a big deal I think

You need one degree of angle to make the needle bearings in the cup move, If the shaft was straight they would have no force on them to cause them to move, so you would constantly be under torque at the same area and tear the joint apart.

Eric

Coalfire,as you posted in the pm to me that also moves the grease around in the joint(you forgot to tell everyone else that) Well ,i for one have learned something again today,that is something that I plan to keep doing because when learning stops,you die. hb1357 ,NO hard feelings,honestly,so the */`~` behind your name did help you. Who ever would have thought to learn about u-joint angles on a heating forum ?

Thanks for sharing the answer with everyone, I was worried Fred would lose sleep over it.

You guys might not believe me, but I thought about this a few times this afternoon and decided that if the joints had zero angle on them, the needle bearings would probably seize up at some point. Almost correct...

Any pin or bearing that carries a load and does not move very much is a challenge to lubricate...like bucket pins on a loader.

As for driveshaft strength, the only one I ever broke was in a silage truck...which had been stretched and saddled with a 20' box. Over the course of 10 years it broke all three driveshaft segments between the transmission and rear axle. It was our only truck that ever had that problem...then again it was the only one with an over fueled 350 Cummins that occasionally hauled some scarey loads off-road.

I just found this thread, the CL ad is gone. From the comments I gather this was an older Chevy. You didn't say how often you needed to tow 10,000 lbs. If this is rarely and not long distance where you couldn't deal with slower speeds, just about any full size truck would do. I used to tow a 12,000 lb boat on a 3 axle trailer with my Ram 1500 2wd with a 3.9 v6 and automatic trans. Over 100 miles one way to the marina, but normally only one round trip per year. Of course this was flat land, only hills were a couple bridges, and I had no problem doing it at 45-50 mph. Hills and/or hot weather would have killed the trans, but I could choose my day so it was not a problem. I also used the truck to haul firewood, hay & straw, scrap metal& other heavy stuff. Made a few long distance trips with it too, one was towing a tandem trailer hauling a full size Ford truck with the bed loaded full. I paid $6,500 for it at 3 years old and 60,000 miles, drove it seven years without a problem, then it was totaled. A bigger, newer, more expensive truck would have done the exact same job.

Back in April I bought a '99 GMC crew cab 4x4 dually with only 105,000 miles on it. With a 454 & 4.10 gears, she is an incredibly powerful gas hog. Very nice clean truck, the cab is great, a lot of rust near the back end, but nothing structural. It required very little to pass safety & emissions inspection, less than $200 in repairs, and I have been very happy with it thus far. I paid $5,000 for it, but since then I have seen very similar trucks under $4,000 asking price.

On the U-joints and drive shafts, I have broken plenty of both. Mostly involving big block Chevy power, close ratio Muncie trans and fat tires. Never did figure out why they broke so many drive lines. One was a 3406 Cat grossing around 80,000 lbs. I had stopped on the shoulder on level ground, when I pulled out into traffic the shaft twisted off. No real reason for it, just cumulative fatigue from a couple hundred thousand miles dragging heavy loads behind a powerful engine.

top top wrote:One was a 3406 Cat grossing around 80,000 lbs. I had stopped on the shoulder on level ground, when I pulled out into traffic the shaft twisted off. No real reason for it, just cumulative fatigue from a couple hundred thousand miles dragging heavy loads behind a powerful engine.

A 3406 is good at finding the weakest link.

Two out of the three times I broke the driveshaft in our truck I was just taking off at light throttle. It was the splined shaft that broke each time, not the driveshaft tube. The metal looked strange at the break, like it was crystallized.

Out of all the trucks we had on the farm, the one that was the most trouble free was actually a GMC with a Detroit and an Allison automatic. It didn't have enough power to hurt anything, and the automatic was very gentle on the drivetrain. It was a dog out on the open road, but for bringing a heavy load out of the field nothing could touch it.

Yes those 3406 Cats were a great engine. It would would run circles around my Big Cam 350's, and you could dial in any hp you want with a screwdriver & dial indicator. What kind of Detroit was that? I never drove anything with an Allison. I cut my teeth on the two stick jobs, a main plus an auxiliary, and eventually graduated to the Fuller twin counter shaft 13 speeds. I built a few double over 13 speeds to replace the RTO 12513, that would really put some legs on them. Never used the clutch except to pull out from a stop. It used to irk me to no end seeing guys holding the clutch down at a light then let it drift and destroy the transmission brake. Before I got out of the business they came out with a two piece brake so it could be replaced without pulling the transmission. I never used one, just saw that they were available.