Well I came across my first steering wheel clunk that alot of people have been complaining about in the 1999-Later trucks. So I called the local dealer to see if they had the lube kit in stock. To my dismay GM has discontinued the kit and want everyone to buy a new intermediate shaft. From what I understand it isn't even a new and improved unit it is just a new one like the same one you already have. So it too will clunk before too long. I just can't see spending $90 everytime this occurs. So I pulled mine out to see what the deal is with these things. It is a known fact that that they clunk due to lack of lubrication in the splines. The discontinued kit basically was a block off rubber cap and some new grease for twenty something dollars. So what I ended up doing is taking a 3/4 inch heater hose block off cap (which I had laying around) and a hose clamp to substitute for the plug that GM used to give us. I filled the shaft with some regular wheel bearing grease (which I already had a tube of) and put the heater hose cap on the end, tightened the clamp really tight, and compressed the shaft until I had about 1/2 an inch of grease on the spline side. Put it all back together and BAM it was like new again! The best thing is it was a totally FREE repair and it only took about an hour (it will be less next time becasue I know what route to go). Just thought you guys might like to know this.

 

Thx for the info!!!

 

I had a front end or steering wheel clunk too. 1st thing the dealership did was place big washers on the crossmember bolts to stop the clunk. 2nd they lubed the shaft and put a rubber plug in it. 3rd replaced with another shaft. and 4th replaced it with a GM redesigned new shaft that looks exactly like the original 1 and wham bam the clunk was finally gone. What I am saying is if teh lube works for you great! But for me the grease went away in 2 weeks and the pop/ clunk was back. Good luck.

 

The dealers were first instructed to just lube the shaft while still in the truck which is very temporary. If you remove the shaft and keep forcing the new grease in until you get passed all the old I am thinking it should last as long as the factory stuff. Bottom line is this is a defect, but as long as I can resolve it at my house I am not as frustrated as I might be if I had to keep dropping the thing off at the dealer.
I will let you guys know if the noise comes back but for now WOW what a difference. I was thinking that if it does come back I may use some marine grease or do some research on the best longest lasting grease I can find. I am thinking marine because I believe it is water from the road that get blown up on the steering shaft and eventually washes away the factory grease. When I was pushing the new grease through you could see the old stuff coming out and it looked really watered down. So hopefully I am on to something here.

 

Hey, this is great info. Free is always good! That you're willing to fix it yourself is exactly why they're not concerned about it, tho. And that sucks.