I'm right in the middle of replacing the driver's side half shaft (axel). Everything came apart exactly as the instructions said. Now I'm putting the shaft back into the transmission, and it won't go! I can feel the splines line up but it won't go in all the way. I've lightly tapped on it when I had it straight, but still no go. So what's the trick?

While I have new lower ball joints I was going to put in while I was in here (doing the lower A arm as well), I can't get the old one out (the A arm is removed, and so are the 2 12mm head bolts). I've tapped on this with a drift and again no go.

Thanks for the help, I'll try the archives, but I had looked pretty extensive before I started, and didn't see any thing on problems getting this back together.

Jerry

 

Backed it out a little and got a running start, it did the trick. I just needed to be more forceful.

Jerry