How To Separate Driveshaft Pieces?

I was removing the Dana 44 rear driveshaft on my '74 CJ-5, and can't seem to separate the halves. I don't want to damage it by being too forceful if I'm missing something.

There's nothing in the FSM on how to do it, and I'd really like to separate it so I can give it a good cleaning.

 

You might have to unscrew the dust shield on the end so you don't hurt it when you force them apart. There might just be some hardened crud on the end of the spline keeping it from going easy.

 

Does anyone know how to get this dust shield off?

Both the front and rear driveshafts feel quite solid at the end of travel, neither of them want to come apart

 

What am I looking at? Need a picture that puts this in context. This looks somewhat like a freeze plug.

 

He is looking at the wrong end, that is the grease weap hole. He needs to remove the dust shield on the other end of the yoke, unscrew it and the shaft will slide out.

 

I think some of the dust shields were crimped on with a toothed edge.

 

come to think of it your correct. I think mostly older jeeps, maybe the MBs, and 2As, 3Bs and so on used little crimp lips you needed to bend up to slide them off. At some point they began using the threaded yokes. My 74 has factory threaded yokes.

 

I agree with this, we need to see the seal where the long end slides into the short end.

 

I was able to get them separated, they had the crimps like the earlier Jeeps. Now to figure out how to find new shaft seals.

Since my (early) 74 has the old setup, and you have the threaded version, maybe this was a mid model year changeover, similar to switching the windshield frame paint from black to body color.

 

Some had the crimped tabs but were splined with a splined cork (usually) or felt seal that allowed the splines to extend past the “seal cap”. Some were threaded and the splines did not extend past the seal cap but typically were longer splines and slip yoke. I’ve seen Intermediates both ways. Most modern or replacement driveshafts have the threaded seal caps. I suspect the felt or cork gasket you will have to make yourself.

 

When separating the halves of the driveshaft, it good to index the two sides so the splines go back with the exact same “clocking”. I usually use a center punch to make alignment marks before they are separated. I’ve seen Jeep driveshafts where the two sections are out of phase from previous work.
-Donny