DIY yoke replace or not?

[judith.mitchell_172596]

I have a 97 chevy k2500
While driving down the hwy, sheared off one of the bolts thats holds the ujoint and drive shaft to the rear differential. Needless to say it killed the ujoint and bent the driveshaft.
Upon trying to extract the sheared off bolt from the yoke, I realized how buggered up the yoke was!

The guy at the drive train shop that’s working on my drive shaft said he had a replacement yoke and that I can take off the old one and put the new one on myself as long as I don’t overtorque it and make sure it spins by hand still.

Now my retired mechanic buddy says I really shouldn’t fool with the yoke myself and have a shop put it on bc of the gears inside.

I thought the yoke was more or less just a bracket to connect the shaft to the differential?

I attached a picture. To take the yoke off, does one just unbolt the nut in the middle or do you fool with those 6 bolts also?

Thank you much in advance!

[Tester]

There’s crush sleeve on the pinion shaft that requires the proper torque when the yoke is reinstalled.

What I do in this situation is use a dial type torque wrench with an indicator when removing the nut.

That records the torque that was required to loosen the nut.

Then when I go to tighten the nut, I add 1 ft/lb to the torque that was required to loosen it.

Tester