The Nissan Path

was checking under the pathfinder for that rattling sound which is driving me nuts, and noticed the front driveshaft has room to play.

is this normal or just a bushing somewhere or should i be worried?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebQnHtf_CLI

Marwan,

Hard to tell exactly because the camera bounces a lot, but it looks to me like worn bushings and not Ujoints.

I agree ^^. You don't need to put that much pressure on the shaft to check for bad U-joints. You just need to look for movement between the driveshaft and it's yoke. There does seem to be a lot of up-and-down movement of the front diff and transfer case, so there could be a bad trans mount or diff mount, but that's hard to say by watching the video, alone, and not knowing how much pressure is being used to push up againts the shaft.

Thanks guys

the u-joints are fine, there's no play at all.
my concern is what Stephen said on the up-and-down movement of the diff.

pressure was very minimal using my arm and gently pushing up, close to lifting about 10 pounds