happy labor day weekend . I don't know about some people's weather south of me but here , great . I SHOULD be working on the electrical but instead I was under my car this weekend hooking up exhaust pipes etc . looked up at driveshaft and thinkin i'm not really lovin' the front spacing . little too much maybe ? 65 special , 350 , Muncie m21 , ford 9" , new shaft/yoke/joints/balance from a good local driveshaft place and I measured that about 20 times before ordering and when I picked it up shaft seemed ok to my measurements ? although I did measure to old yoke and he recommended new front yoke which we did go with . car up on stands , supported under front control arms and on rear axle , not frame support . with old yoke pushed all way in , measured u-joint center to center distance and subtracted 1" . seems like about 1-1/4" , close , but just does not seem quite right . paranoid ! couple pics .
You should have about 3/4" of movement. But you would have to remove the driveshaft from the rear end to check, since we can't tell how long the yoke is.
yes correct . thought about that . should not take too much to do . and I think I was figuring on the 3/4" ( maybe 1" max ) in my original calculations . I will need to lower rear of car later on , so by raising the rear axle some that should move it more towards trans correct ? probably not much .
I "think" raising the axle draws the yoke outward from the trans. The geometry of the control arms swing the axle in an arc.
dropped shaft this am - couple pics . was able to study the rear axle/control arm thing - yeah , almost seems like when the axle moves up the lower arm would cause the distance to increase , but , the upper may cause it to decrease ? which would cause a pinion angle change ?
I can't tell for sure. Compare the dimension from when it was installed onto the diff and then off the diff, as far as it will go into the trans. I suspect it isn't far enough into the trans, from the looks of it.
brian : susp not hanging . jack stands under front arms and under rear axle , not frame . steevee : I think it pushes right up to ridge where I measured in first pic in original post . will dbl check that . came off dif pretty easy .
finally got under car again , dropped rear of shaft , pushed into trans as much as I could , supported rear of shaft , took a quick pic . front yoke ridge to seal lip about 1/4" .