By Ben Gott on Tuesday, May 15, 2001 - 02:25 pm: Edit

I was playing around thought I would see if the clunk was less aparent if I put the emerg. brake on and then shifted from drive-reverse.. lessned the clunk quite a bit.. I am assuming slack in drive line? somethign like that?

By Jon on Tuesday, May 15, 2001 - 03:38 pm: Edit

In response to you and the dude posting about a clunk in the front-end... yes, it's driveline slack. And it gets worse the older the truck is. A little clunk isn't much to worry about, and I'm not entirely sure what the fix is aside from new universal joints. You could probably replace the whole half shaft and rear prop shaft if you really wanted to cure it, but that's a little excessive at this point. What year is your truck? Mine is a '95 with about 84,000 miles and it clunks more now than it used to, but sounds identical to what you and the other dude are experiencing.

By Ford Prefect on Tuesday, May 15, 2001 - 06:42 pm: Edit

As you describe putting the Hand brake (Parking brake to foreigners) "lessned the clunk quite a bit.." then most of your problem must be in the rear drive line. This could be,as well as driveshaft, all of the splines in the rear axle as well as the side gears and crown wheel to pinion. As all these clearances get bigger with age the lash increases. If your Drive shaft universals are ok then you will be spending your money for little or no improvement although it is worthwhile checking the spline on the driveshaft as this often gets overlooked in servicing.