Trying to remove front driveshaft, nuts are stuck
 

HI, I decided to rebuild the front driveshaft on my newly acquired 2000 DII. Strange as it may seem, a prior owner had the forward u-joint of the double carden joint replaced, but that was the only one of the three on the front driveshaft. I have an odd vibration between 38 and 40 miles an hour.

So I got after the job this afternoon, or should I say I tried to do the job this afternoon. The nuts must have been put on by a gorilla. I was only able to get one of four off of the front and one out of four on the back. The nuts seem to be made of fairly soft metal, the 14mm wrenches just aren't doing the job. Because of the flanges I can't get the wrenches to seat all of the way down. Any ideas? What a pain on the tail. I did bathe all of the nuts and bolts with BP Blaster, I will see of that helps any. Thanks in advance for any suggerstions. Phil

They are 9/16" bolt heads you should just be able to stick the closed end of a combination wrench in there and muscle them out. A long pattern wrench is best if you have one

I will try the 9/16s and see if that fits better than the 14mm. I will also try to find a longer wrench. The regular length wrench and a cheater pipe just aren't doing the trick.......Phil

14mm is a hair smaller so if you were having problems getting the wrench on the nut all the way it may help if they are rounding though then you may be screwed. If the nuts are already rounded or rounding you may want to buy a 6 point closed end combination wrench in 9/16" and see if that grips it. Otherwise its dremel time unless you can get a vise grip in there.

Ideally use a 6pt box end so you don't round them off.
You can get better access to the nuts by raising the front end of the propshaft as high as it will go.

You'll never get it if it doesn't sit on there flush and I doubt pb blaster will help much. 6 point box wrench and grind it down just enough to fit it in there so it fits flush on the nut. I forget, can't you get a 3/8" socket on there and use a long extension to get it off?

I will add that the nuts are nylock nuts... They will be tough all the way out.

What I have done in those cases is to go to a mechanic shop and ask the guys to let me use their impact wrenches to remove those bolts.

After doing it two or three times, I decided to purchase an electric impact wrench at Pricesmart. I have used it two or three times more, and the tool is basically fantastic. It will help you avoiding some headaches

Yes impacts are great but you cannot use an impact on the driveshaft bolts you need to use a combination wrench.

I used 14mm wrenches and just took mine off today and over to the drive line shop for rebuild... I got lucky, mine went fairly smooth considering the propshaft had 103,000 on it