Well, things have taken a turn for the worse. One of the bolts on the u-joint connection was missing. And one tab on each of the lock plates was also missing. I felt around with a magnet and found one of the tabs, but I did not find the bolt.
There are various reasons why I had put this project on hold a while back, but one of them was because while stopped at a stop sign, the truck made clunk noise and wouldn't move forward. I was able to get it to move if I allowed it to back up a bit and then it would go forward, but then it would clunk while driving and resisted moving forward as if I had the brakes on. So I pulled over, rented a trailer and trailered it back home.
Now I am thinking it may be that missing bolt is somewhere in the transmission and that is where the clunk is coming from? I don't know if there is room for it to make its way from the u-joint area forward into the transmission, but I scraped all around the end of the transmission area of the u-joint and didn't find it. I am working on the ground underneath the truck, so it is a little hard to see.
On another note, I don't see how I can get the rear u-joint out of the propeller shaft. When I lift it, it doesn't clear the end of transmission before hitting the floor of the cabin. I can't bring it down because the frame cross member is in the way. Do I need to remove the cross member? Even with the cross member removed, it wouldn't clear the transmission because I have the entire truck on jack stands. Maybe if I lowered the rear of the truck off the stands, the shaft would be closer to horizontal relative to the transmission and then it might clear. It is also possible I am not pushing the u-joint back on the splines far enough - I only got to move maybe 1/2 inch.
So, thoughts on the missing bolt? (I am afraid removal of the transmission and a rebuild may be in order - which means the truck is going to have to sit for long while as I have other projects that are going to take priority unfortunately).
Should I removed the frame cross member? (I am sure that will be fun looking at the very rusted bolts)
