The rubber, eraser material wheels are probably a better bet. I am sure you have tried gasket remover, maybe a torch to soften it?
I just carefully used a razor and back scraped it, but yours looks worse.

good luck with it, I hate when a simple job takes hours longer than it should.

 

try scraping it with a winshield ice scraper. Or anything with a similar hard plastic edge.

 

I got it, finally, using Jasco premium paint and epoxy remover and back scraping with a contractor's razor. Those of you not in California are luck because you can get the original Jasco while we can only get the non-methylene chloride version which is nowhere near as effective.

I learned about Jasco from a friend who is a long-time Rover mechanic.

 

Yep, absolutely.

 

I agree with YETIX. From an aircraft mechanics perspective we would never use a wire wheel on aluminum.

 

That's cool, whatever makes you comfortable. I've done it for years, but I can definitely see coming from something as critical as aircraft maintenance why that would be seen as a no no.

 

Took my '04 down to the farm with a friend over the weekend and was able to do a little trail riding on the logging/fire roads.

On the drive home started to hear a chirp consistent with road speed. We stopped at a gas station and I checked all the wheels for debris/ice/gravel. Nothing.

Drove on another 20 miles to the next small town, at which point the the chirp sounded like metal on metal when I was at highway speeds. I had just had the both drive shafts removed and greased, so I wasn't convinced that was where the sound was coming from. We pulled over into a Menard's parking lot, found a flat spot and I got out the socket wrenches. Figured I'd pull the front shaft and hope that was the issue because I really didn't want to deal with a bad wheel hub 70 miles from home.

Laying on the asphalt in 30* F weather is no fun but the front driveshaft came off fairly easily. Stowed it in the back of the Rover, started it, got it rolling, locked the CDL and there was no squeak. I thanked Jesus, cursed my mechanics, and drove home.

From what I can tell the shaft failed at the end that bolts to the Transfer Case. I'll take a closer look today to see if it is greased. This is the third front driveshaft that I've put on this thing. I'm only running a 2" lift with 33" tires, but it must be enough to eat these driveshafts. I'm thinking this time I'll go with a GBR heavy duty unless anyone else has a better idea.

 

@jastutte 3rd drive shaft in how years/miles ?

 

i was trying to remember that this morning.

I bought the Rover in 2016 and I think it had 102,000 miles at the time. I'm at 212,000 miles now.

A lot of around town(it's my work truck), a lot of highway miles(from the Midwest to the Colorado Rockies and Folly Beach, SC twice) and some off-roading.

The second and third driveshafts were from Lucky8 and both failed at the same spot, the front u-joint. Had a shop tell me they are not rebuildable.
The one that just failed was fully greaseable and, i think, failed at the transfer case side. I dropped it at a Driveshaft shop this morning to see if it can be rebuilt. They'll let me know where it failed.

 

center ball failed if it's at the t-case side, easy spot to miss when greasing if you aren't familiar with these. I'd look into gwynn lewis for driveshafts after tom woods seem to be hit or miss and GBR is kind of right there too in my book.