hit oilpan pretty good, anything I should be checking?

[inVERt'D]

Cool. I meant to suggest that you grease your joints more often. It only takes a few minutes to do it, and you have a garage, so what if you did it every month at least? Your steeper driveline angle WILL wear out joints more quickly.

[daniel_buck]

Thanks! I'll at least have time to do the visual/wiggle inspection before this weekend. And I'll pump more grease into them.

[inVERt'D]

The standard way for inspecting for loose joints is to try and wiggle the driveshaft. Also look for play in the t-case output and axle pinion while you're at it. There should be no discernible lateral play. You should use a small pry bar or something on the joints to make sure.

Next, you might try a few pumps of grease into each u-joint and seeing if that quiets it down. You want to fill them up, and if grease is squirting out from under the caps, you've done a little more than needed. Too much grease is messy. Too little will eat up your joints in a hurry. Grease the slip coupling on your DS too.

If things still haven't quieted down, you should consider disassembling the u-joints to check for worn or broken needle bearings, etc. You can get some new1330s on eBay pretty cheap. You should keep spares anyway. I recently got a new Spicer 1310/5-153X for my front DS for $12.50 shipped. Turned out to be made in China--figures.

[daniel_buck]

I do grease them, but I'm not sure if I've done them regularly enough, or enough pumps. I grease them probably every 2-3 oil changes (but on long trips, I grease everything every oil change, like when I drive across county). As far as how much grease I put in there, I usually put about 1 pump, I never know how much to put in.

What would I look for while checking the u-joints? The rear driveshaft is a Tom Wood double cardian driveshaft, I'd say it probably has 25k miles on it?

[inVERt'D]

Wouldn't hurt to open up your u-joints and make sure they're okay. Do you grease them regularly?

[daniel_buck]

So here's a question, I've done this driveshaft binding check, and it rotates nice and smooth even at full suspension droop (I even jumped on the tires a bit to make sure they were as low as they were going to go).

However, now that I've got the doors and windows back on (because of the rain a few days ago) I'm hearing a faint clicking sound, or tapping sounds that I don't remember before, and it appears to be coming from behind me, not from the engine bay. (as best I can tell), it's very fast, and seems to increase speed with the speed of the vehicle, regardless of gear. It's faint, so it's a little hard to tell for sure. To me, it sounds fast enough to be the driveshaft clicking. But there's no vibration that I can tell. And by time I get going faster than maybe 20mph, I can't hear it anymore.

Could this be the driveshaft, even though it doesn't bind or give any extra resistance with the suspension uncompressed? or could this be something else? There's no twigs or anything rubbing against the tires or anything else that I can see. And while under the jeep rotating the driveline I didn't hear anything.

ideas?

[daniel_buck]

Ok, so I FINALLY got my lazy self to check the driveshaft, since I haven't wheeled with the pushed up transfer case since I put the 4" springs in. Wheeling next weekend, so I figured I better check, haha!

In any case, I jacked up the vehicle by the gas tank skid until the load was off the rear axle, no binding! Smooth rotation, but man that driveshaft angle sure does look steep!

http://youtu.be/uUjOQCAQlaM

[inVERt'D]

Even if you don't know of any exceptions to that, you can't possibly know that to be true.
I shouldn't have to argue this, but here goes.

OEM stuff doesn't come with limit straps because the OEM (and many high-performance) suspensions are designed to be self-limiting, shock or no shock. Leaf springs, torsion bars, sway bars, ball joints,
upper and lower coil spring retainers, and steering linkages all control wheel droop. On most of those
the shock may bottom out, but not under normal driving conditions, and even if they do, the
aforementioned factors combined with comparatively light wheels and tires will mitigate most of the
shock to the shock.

Long travel off-road suspensions are different animals. Much of the bind is eliminated by design.
Sway bars systems aren't as stiff, or may be completely disconnected. The big tires put a lot more
weight on the wheels, and the axles themselves are likely to be very heavy for the spring rates
compared to OEM vehicles. Just as importantly, they are driven through places and in manners that
stock vehicles weren't engineered to endure. All of that means that a shock can be coming down on the
end of its stroke with a lot more force.

How much this matters will obviously depend upon how and where you drive, not to mention the cost of
your shocks relative to your budget. Still, I think it's important to know the difference between "I've
gotten away with it up to now," and "this is the best way to do it." A strap is cheaper than any
decent new shock, and it will be a more durable droop limiter than even the best racing shocks. I
wouldn't discourage anyone from running them.

Maybe this video is relevant to you or maybe not, but things would have ended better if he'd been using limit straps.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUMTgsR9ueY

[aw12345]

On any car or truck previously and currently sold the axle or wheel droop is limited by the shock absorber.
Oem stuff doesn't come with limit straps

[6spdYJ]

Are shocks designed to limit travel?

Yes. No. Sort of. Well, not really. Okay, yeah, almost. I'm sure the shock manufacturers would say no. But, what limits the droop on a stock JK? How about coilovers? Air shocks? Aren't those shocks too? Is it a good idea to rely on shocks as the end-all travel limiter? The magic 8 ball says no.

[inVERt'D]

Are shocks designed to limit travel?

[curtis]

It has worked for me for a long time, so that's why I believe in what I say.

[inVERt'D]

I've gotten away with it quite a bit myself. The question is, do you feel lucky?

[curtis]

Ok, I do not run a rear TB and I run a 3 link in the front. My front TB never binds up and my rear suspension never binds. My suspension has always been stopped by the shock travel and never had a problem with it. When you flex to the max on the shocks you are in the big rocks at a slow crawl. I can make my front and rear coils fall out by just adding longer shocks. my SB's don't limit much.

[inVERt'D]

The front TB bottom-out works together with the CA bottom-out and steering linkage bind IIRC. Usually there is some CA bind in there as well. Removing the rear sway bar can allow your rear coils to fall out unless your shocks are too short.

Don't think I've heard of or seen longer shocks alone allowing the coils to fall out, but I guess that would depend on how your SB was set up, your control arms, length of the springs, and all that.

Shocks can limit droop, and if they never get yanked on hard, you'll likely get away with it. Thing is, like driveshafts, they're not made to limit axle travel, so it's really not a good situation when that occurs in the wild.