ok it's done. i had to take out the whole drive shaft to do it. there was no other way to remove the yolk from the front shaft. the exhaust and low range shifter presented quite a problem. and *****, *****, moan, moan. all in all i saved $200 dollars at a cost of 6 hours and discovered that the bottom of my 60K mile truck is spottless. them germans in 'bama use good steel.