Thump noise when stopping. (Tailshaft clunk)

[grande1810 Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close grande1810]

I had the clunk in my V6 auto, greased the tailshafts and it went away but has just started to come back, time to re grease tailshaft slipjoint..

[forte Lurker Find all posts View Profile Close forte]

Hi guys, my 1st post here (from Singapore). My 2.5 month old Prado do have such problem too after clocking 7500km.

Found this link may be useful click here

[Riv39 Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close Riv39]

Interesting but I don't agree otehrwise why did it happen to mine before the first service? I reckon it's a poor design spline that does not allow the grease to lubricte it suffeciently casuing the binding. My 150 has now been happy for over 10000km since the last grease job.

[MidLifeCrisis Out of control poster! Find all posts View Profile Close MidLifeCrisis]

Shit, starting to thump in my 2009, 120 series diesel Grande. Has about 35k on the clock.....

[Rusty62 Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close Rusty62]

Two weeks and still good.

Now have done a couple of thousand km sinse new shaft fitted, including floods out at Roma. Greased shaft before we left and still good. (So far).

Bugger, the 'Clunk' is back. Won't bother going back to Toyota as they obviously don't know, or can't fix this.

Rusty

[Rusty62 Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close Rusty62]

Finally pulled the shaft out before Easter, cleaned and used a mix of moly grease, never seize and diff oil. Other than a bit of splatter under the car all good. No clunk.
Looking closer at the spline, the machining of the male spline is not as smooth of a finish as i would have imagined. It is just a tool finish, not ground. This rough type of finish is what i believe the problem is. I did not take a photo but you can see the 'bumps' on the spline. When the tail shaft is not under load it moves freely in / out. When we loaded the shaft radially the shaft took a lot of force to slide. I would image the engineers hoped the grease would stay in the rough finish of the spline to aid lubrication but from what i can see this has only made it worse.
If this keeps going i can have the shaft replaced with a new unit from Driveline Services for about $400. Might be money well spent.

[Rusty62 Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close Rusty62]

Had to pull the shaft out again. Cleaned and regressed this time putting a lot of grease down the spline on the back half of the shaft. As stated earlier I believe the problem is the machining quality that cause the spline to jam under load. Will need to upgrade spline soon.

[johna Member Find all posts View Profile Close johna]

Have the old 2003 oiler with 179000k's and never have heard any driveline noises, .............so far..
Only problems from new were DEALER caused.

After reading message #272, I have read somewhere that youonly need to grease tailshaft until iy just starts to move, otherwise it will be overfull and can cause some problems.

[Rusty62 Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close Rusty62]

2weeks and the clunk is back. May as well just put up with it until I can have a new spline put in by anyone other than Toyota.

[KAKADAZ Avid PP Poster! Find all posts View Profile Close KAKADAZ]

Does anyone's prado have a thud on accelerating / decelerating then accelerating again like a worn tailshaft with play in it type thud? Mine does and it annoys the crap out of me. Mine Does not clunk at a stop like others though?

[gxl_d4d Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close gxl_d4d]

Mine stopped thumping after about 90 000km. I used to grease every 5000km and toyota at 10 000km. I used normal lithium grease. I noticed thumping after a few thousand km. Since I've stopped applying grease between services, I've not noticed the thump. In my case it could have been caused by the use of a non-moly grease.

The other reason could be that all of the machine marks have worn off or smoothed off after an long off load trip just after the 90 000km service.

[Riv39 Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close Riv39]

Interesting, the head mechanic at my local Toyota dealer told me that it would eventually go away......I couldn't stand the thump so I had my shaft replaced under warranty and no trouble since.

[Rusty62 Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close Rusty62]

The clunk is back. Pulled out again , cleaned and changed grease to Castrol EPL2. Filled the spline as full as, then pushed the spline in until it reached the shortest working length with the grease nipple out. Refitted and the clunk is still present, but no where near as notable.
Has slowly getting less clunk as time goes on but i am still topping up every 5000km or so. There is a plug under the uni joint which will pop out if you overfill the spline.

[bilo33prado Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close bilo33prado]

What’s the warning? The links don’t seem to work?

Ladies and Gents,

Have had several discussion with toyota about this thud when pulling up in my 07 D-4D. First of all I was told that I had put too much grease in the tailshaft spline, unfortunately for toyota they had just done the 10k service so that blew their theory. They were also very surprised that I knew <<REMOVED>> , its supposed <<IT IS!>> . I was then told that my 07 vehicle has the new shaft and it might just need greasing. After having a look toyo said the spline did not have enough grease in it. I picked the prado up after greasing and immediately felt the same thud so back to toyo I went. Once again they checked to see if my prado had the modified shaft and once again it did. The dealer reply was that the spline has corrugations along it to help retain the grease but instead the spline catches and that they would remove the shaft and file the spline. This sounded a bit dodgy to me and I wasn't sure if that was a toyota fix or just a dealer fix so I made an enquiry to another dealer. Straight up their service department told me that it was the toyota fix and that the spline would be filed in 2 stages, a bit at a time. He also told me that the new shaft is just as bad as the original. I've got the prado back after filing but haven't driven it yet to see the result. The other half hasn’t complained about it yet anyway. On the invoice from the dealer it states “due to poor machine of splines, removed tailshaft, filed and regreased. So fingers crossed this will fix the problem.

**Mod note** Please go and read this thread before posting about these removed items. http://www.pradopoint.com/viewtopic.php?t=1709 PARTICUARLY SECTION 10!
Then read this bit: http://www.pradopoint.com/viewtopic.php?t=1476
Consider this a warning. :x