Driveshaft center bearing

[Glen]

Rriveshaft center bearing

The center bearing on my driveshaft froze, then tore itself from the mounting. The driveshaft is damaged and must be replaced. There may be damage in the transmission, the seals are bad for sure. That's the good news:{



The truck is VOR in Wenatchee; the factory does not have a driveshaft; the dealer doesn't expect to get one for at least two weeks; my turkey hunt never happened.



My trailer was stranded in Wenatchee but a friend drove over and towed it home. The truck is at Valley Motors, the Dodge dealer in Wenatchee. They seem to be good people.



This is a lot of damage, probably close to $2000. Forntunately, the truck is still under warranty and the engine is STOCK.



The bearing was very hot when I crawled under to check the damage. Maybe I'll check the new one from time-to-time to see if it is getting hot. The truck will soon be out of warranty so the next one will be on me!

 

[Dieselnerd]

That has to be a rare failure. My guess is that bearing was assembled at the factory without lubricant. Once a bearing has been lubed they may get dry and noisy eventually but they rarely freeze up.

 

[MoparDave]

Actually, the driveshaft center support bearing failures seams to becoming more common

 

[rrausch]

I've greased a few, on Chebby 3/4 tons. I used a grease gun and a needle fitting (looks just like a hypodermic needle) to shoot some grease around the rubber seals. This has always worked pretty good for me. I've greased a lot of different sorts of sealed bearings this way, not just driveshaft support bearings.



I also recently saw a synthetic grease called "linear lube". It is a 100% synthetic grease with Teflon particles. It's a little pricey, at $20 a tube, from reidtool.com