As I was puttering around the yard in my Wildcat, I got a strong knocking sound from under the car. This car came out of a auto yard and has been rehabbed over the last six months. I put the car on jackstands, and as the tires are rotated the driveshaft wobbles around in the frame. Like it has a one-two inch movement the whole way. I am guessing the center support, or center support bearing (or both) is/are shot. Anyone have any experience with this 2 U-joint, 1 slip spline, 1 CV joint driveshaft contraption?
Hey Joe. (1)Sounds like a froze u-joint or two. (2)A sticking CV ball/socket.(3)The rubber carrier bearing insulator could be shot. Maybe a combo of all? Tim
Is it easy to replace.............. I am told so, and I hope so. I went and bought a new center bearing support from the only driveshaft shop in town. I wanted to drop it off for him to do the job, but he was covered up in business until the middle of next week. Me being a person that likes to do as much on his own car as possible (read:impatient), after talking to the driveshaft man, I'm going to tackle it. In the attached picture, my finger is pointing to a nut that is tight that does not allow the bulbous end of a slip spline past it. My Wildcat has a 2 piece driveshaft similar to those found in S-10s and newer Toyota trucks, so just like them, between the two sections of driveshaft, there is a slip spline that can go in and out depending on driveline angle. If everything is perfect, once I undo the nut, the two sections of driveshaft come apart. At that point, the mount piece with two bolt holes will come right off, and the other half of it left behind should come right off after I pull out a big c-clip. Wish me luck.
Well, the install went OK, but not painless. Here are the two halves of the driveshaft. The slip spline was in great condition for being 41 years old. Remember, if you disassemble one, you need to know exactly where the splines go back in. One spline off and you can get a vibration. I marked mine, but you can just go by an index spring and missing groove to re-align. I figured once the spline was off, the center bearing and support would just slide off. That is not the case. The service manual shows a complicated puller, but two raps with the rubber mallet and the bearing and what was left of the support came off.
More expense I had planned on reusing my existing bearing, because it turned great, and looked in good condition on the side I could see with the driveshaft assembled. Of course, once the driveshaft was disassembled and I could see the other side of the bearing, my story changed. The outside and inside races of the bearing looked great, but on one side, the black metal/plastic ring which keeps the bearing sealed had deformed from the metal ring that held it in. I have red arrows pointing to the deformed part in the pictures. I thought about re-using it for a while, as I could get the cover to snap back on, but for $36 a new one could be had at Advance Auto. I decided that I didn't want to go through this exercise again, so I went with the new bearing. Picture shows it still on the drive shaft.
Since I am very fond of finishing projects right before sundown, with my cars living outside, on a Sunday evening when every store is closed, I seldom can run into town for new parts or tools. I needed to seat the bearing into my new support, so I found a handy solution. I took one rubber mallet, which had the same diameter of the bearing, and held it on top of the bearing. Then I hit that mallet with another, larger mallet. It worked, but would not completely seat the bearing. To get the bearing all the way into the support, I cut a 2 inch piece of the gray electrical conduit you see in the picture (which is also the same diameter as the bearing), and used a large bench vise to drive it in.
Here is the new center support and bearing assembly in place. This is where I had the most problems. It was hard to tighten the nut that held the spline in, as now it was blocked by the new center support. I tightened it with an adjustable wrench (as seen in an above picture) so I did not know the torque I was tightening. I should have bought some crow's foot wrenches for this, but once again, it was Sunday when everything was closed. When I tightened the nut until it would no longer turn, the driveshaft would not turn either. The manual states toque it to 65 ft. lbs, which I have done with my torque wrench before. I know that at 65 ft. lbs, I am putting some serious effort into it with my wrench. I felt that I did not put near that torque into the nut, but it would end up against the bearing, and nothing would turn. After taking apart the center support twice :spank: to make sure I had it on as far as it would go, I just resigned myself to tightening the net as far I could without it going so far against the bearing it would stop the driveshaft. So, now the nut is on "tight" (so it needs a little pressure to break it loose, and cannot be loosed by hand), but not 65 ft. lbs tight. Here is my happy moment of completion:
After all this, I finally got to drive this car a whole two miles. For that who do not know, I rescued this car from a junk yard because it was my dad's old car and it was not running. Over 8 months, I have finally got it roadworthy. :beer
Cause my butt didn't get the bearing seated all the way :grin: After putting the shaft back in, I was getting a wild scream out of the shaft. Took it to the only driveshaft shop in town, and found out my bearing was not pressed down enough. $75.00 for him to fix my boo-boo and balance the driveshaft. (And he balanced both halves together). It took a lot of weight too. Here's some pics:
