Took me 6 hours on my passenger side and 4 on the driver. The yoke was bent bad on the passenger side so the new joint wouldnt fit, on top of that I didn't know the u joint for abs was different than non abs. I have abs so I went to auto zone, O'Reilly's, and car quest. Took me 2 hours to finally go to the right place and they were out of the u joints. Had to go back to auto zone with the right part number and finally got the right one.

 

Abs uses the smaller u joint. As.for the bent yoke, well that's a different story. Mines was just rusted but the ball joint press made quick work with my battery impact gun

 

That's really funny actually. My XJ had ABS and when I did my u-joints, I had no clue that there were different ones for ABS. Good thing I replaced my stub shafts with non-ABS versions at the time.

I replaced the stubs shafts because one of them also had a bent ear. Mine was so bad that I blew the end cap of the u-joint apart just trying to get it out. Wouldn't budge at all.

 

The abs joint is actually bigger. I got two of the non abs and they were too small. The cups just slid right in

 

Actually there is no difference at all between an ABS vs non ABS stub shaft. The ABS version simply has a tone ring on it instead of a dust shield. Both of these items can easily be removed and swap from one shaft to another without any difficulty at all.

 

I didn't pay that much attention to it all. Mine were so rusted that there wasn't a visible seam there, and I bought the non-ABS version because I've actually never used it on this XJ, so no point in using more complex parts.

 

Hmm. Good to know. I always thought the abs axles used different.

 

Up until 94 (95?) the ABS and non-ABS used different front axle shafts with different u-joints (non-ABS were smaller). After 94, they were all the same size (larger). One of the first things I did with my POS was buy axle shafts from a part-out to get the larger joints.

 

The auto parts store gave me two different part numbers on my 92 for abs and non abs

 

that's right abs u joints were larger... 1.188 diameter and the non abs u joints is 1.063 diameter then in 1995/1996 days they decided to standardize the size to 1.188.

 

I was referring to shafts from the same model years folks.

96 ABS is the same as a 96 Non-ABS, 97 ABS is the same as a 97 Non-ABS. etc, etc.

Early non-ABS axles do in fact have the smaller u-joints.

 

Right

 

And it took 4 different auto parts stores to figure that out.

 

Hey. I’ve been trying to tackle this project myself on my ‘95 xj sport, and the damn axle nut won’t bust loose, already have tried impact gun, broken 2 breaker bars in the process, also attempted with metal pipe, any advice, extremely close to just bringing it to a shop

 

What if I already have the u-joints supplied and just need labor? I have a 1995 Jeep Cherokee sport and everything under there hasn’t been touched since it was manufactured I imagine, having an impossible time getting the axle nut or hub bolts off, have tried everything from breaker bars, pipe attached, impact gun, etc, any help?