AWD Delete on my wife's Bravada

The Ram 50's been behaving lately so figured I'd come and let you know what I'm working on on my wife's 97 Bravada.

The CV's have been knocking for the past month, and it's finally getting to the point where I gotta do something about it, so I start tearing into the wheels and so forth and after a while I notice that she does not have a front drive shaft going into her differential.
No clue how I missed that before. We bought the SUV used a few years back and it runs fine and I guess I never had cause to look under the body til today.
So seeing how there is no power going to the front diff, the CV's seem kind of useless to replace at this point, so my idea is to just chuck em.
After some more googling I see that driving an AWD vehicle without front CVs can result in nasty things happening, til I stumble upon a Jeep forum post that suggests cutting/disassembling the CVs so that the lower part stays in the wheel bearing and that should prevent the wheel bearing from failing and the wheels from flying off the vehicle.
So tomorrows plan is to remove the CV's leaving just the bottom bit in the wheel housing and then see what happens.

Feel free to let me know if I'm about to do something really stupid :D

Later,
eb

It will be just fine as long as you keep the axle nut and the cup of the axle. Also make sure you get the correct torque on the axle nut, Dont over torque.....

Thats messed up that they sold it like that without at least telling you. Stuff happens though.

Ya, gotta love used car dealers.

Giving up for the day, buying an air compressor and impact wrench tomorrow.
Tried removing the hub nut with a 12 foot breaker bar, no joy. Bent a tire iron and 2 lug bolts trying to get it off with the vehicle lifted and wheel locked against the ground with the tire iron. Then put the tire back on so I'd have the weight of the vehicle to resist against and blew apart the gears on my 1/2in socket (lifetime guarantee, here I come).
Tomorrow's payday, time to finally upgrade to the wonderful world of air tools.

Guess I got the axle nut from hell. Bought another lifetime warranty tool, 17 inch long, 1/2 drive breaker bar thing from Ace.
Sheared the head off inside the 35mm socket, which is already wedged onto the nut, so now pretty much hosed.
Taking tuesday off work to try and get this thing done, working at the restaurant this weekend, so don't want to get too greased up dicking with it after work tomorrow.
Might try a propane torch, with any luck the whole Bravada might go up in flames...


edit: managed to knock the sheared off head into the socket so the hole is clear again. Got a cheap compressor from a friend, will try an impact wrench tomorrow and see what happens.

The reason they pulled the front driveshaft was because the awd transfer case was shot to the front axle - surprized it works at all. Had a 99 awd Bravada that the transfer case failed twice under warranty - not enough clutches in the transfer case to survive the constant slipping for the awd. If you follow the 30k change interval for the transfer case insures the destruction of the clutches. GM changed it twice down to 7500 miles, and the clutches may still fail. I dumped the thing and traded it on my Blackwood.