Here's an update. I installed the new shaft today . sorry no pics I cant find my camera. I was wrong about the source of the noise being in the little ball u joint. there was some play in it but there was a lot of play in the slip joint part of the shaft. You cant see it or test that section until the shaft is removed completely. I believe that all of the parts for this job can be reused except the upper shaft lower bushing. Toyota says that the bearings and a bunch of other parts are not reuseable but I found no wear or damage to most of them. Now for those of you thinking about doing this yourself there is good news. the ball u joint had very little play so I would not replace it or the upper shaft if I was doing this on my own. Since the slip joint is not splined and is 2 crimped pieces of steel fit together, it will most likely loosen up again. The joints sole purpose is to collapse in the event of a collision to avoid injury to the driver from having the steering wheel shoved into their chest. Now I was looking at the angles of the shaft and the u joint at the bottom in the engine compartment and it looks to me that that shaft could not get shoved that direction unless the firewall is pushed 4 inches back. What I did to avoid having the play and the noise come back is tack welded the slip joint so it would not start moving again (disclaimer: do this at your own risk and this is in no way an endosrement to circumvent the safety features designed into your vehicles). Then just put it all back together. From what I have seen in there if you decided to tack the joint then this job would only cost you the price of a bushing and a snap ring. I suspect that since the tack welds are very small that they would break in the event of a major accident and the joint would work as designed just dont weld the whole thing solid. The whole job took about an hour and I did not have to remove the ignition switch so no drilling out the security bolts. Hope this helps and post any questions I will answer the best I can.
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