My friend did it in about half a day! I'm not that mechanically inclined so he does all the hard stuff, the only thing was we weren't sure on axle bearing size, chevy seemed to have used 2 sizes.I love the new unit and it didn't take long to get over the fear of that haunting broken gear sound, it seems to hook up quite well now! I got the parts from a place here in MI called drivetrain specialists.

this came STRAIGHT from a gm tech.....

to fix the clunk in the drivetrain from a dead stop(chirp, clunk, bump...etc...) pull the driveshaft and stuff a raquetball in the yoke and reinstall driveshaft.....

it fixed my bro inlaws on his 01.....been that way for 30000miles.....

I have a '99 z71 ext. cab and the "clunk" was terrible in it. I put a raquetball in it this week and it is 100% better. Now let me tell you the easy part of the job...getting the ball all the way in the yoke. I finally got it in by making a tiny hole in the ball so the air could escape and it could collapse. I then used a broom handle to ram it all the way in the yoke tube aling with a little grease to help it. Now here comes the hard part...installing the driveshaft back in the truck. Since you now have a raquetball as a "spring" inside the yoke you have to compress it to get the rear u-joints back into the pinion shaft yoke. I hade to use a come-a-long for this part. I took the ratcheting end of the come-a-long and hooked it onto the cross member that is right below the tailshaft and then wrapped the cable end around the driveshaft right in front of the ears on the driveshaft itself. Then slowly take up on the com-a-long while push up on the driveshaft until it clears the pinion yoke. This is where a second man comes in handy. Now as you guide the rear u-joints back into the pinion yoke let the second man let the com-a-long off easy. Then your done with the hard part. It was amazing to shift the truck back and forth from R to D here just about nothing. It does work and I even had a GM Service manager tell me that there shop thinks it is a good fix for this problem.