Good Info Tim, Now to decide if to take paint remover to mine and make them futher apart? They look to good now so maybe not.
Here's a little theory about the variable stripe spacing, for which I have no proof. Just thinkin' outloud ..... The original stripes shown in all the pictures are fairly crisp. They appear to be sprayed by machine, not but some guy holding a spray-bomb in his hand. Now, if I was assigned to design the machine which painted the stripes in the driveshaft assembly plant (maybe the same machine on which they were balanced?), I would give it, say, 4 nozzles (or however many nozzles as there are stripe colors), each at a fixed location, and each fed by a big paint resevoir. When the operator is assembling/testing driveshaft type "A," he knows to hit, say, nozzles 1 and 3. So the stripe spacing on the type "A" driveshaft would be different than on the type "B" drivesaft, which might use nozzles 3 and 4.
Well close up the stripes are actually pretty bad...vary in width, one had an obvious drip on it, etc. My understanding was they just used brushes dipped in paint...
If you hold a brush next to a spinning shaft it will make a fairly straight stripe I think is what makes sense. A spray would just blow all over the place and you would get a painted shaft. Not meant to sound like what it does to some. Out of the gutter please.o No:
All: I agree with Dave on this. Spinning drive shaft and a paint brush. You have to lok at the technology they had back then on something like this which was, None ! That would have been the cheapest and fastest way of doing things. Just my 2 cents. Ken
Didn't read the whole thread, but the paint marks would likely have been applied when the tube was made, not the shaft. The line building the drive shaft would get finished tubes, and the tubes are identified by color code. Yes, the color code would vary by drive train variation, but that would be secondary. The main point would be identification of the tube to build the shaft. Stripes made by the balancer operator would indicate the high point of imbalance........ drive shafts are bablanced to a tolerance, not perfect. A stripe going all the way around wouldn't be able to indicate that point...... those stripes are run the other direction. Now days the stripes are just sloppily applied dots, done by machine. My information is first hand, but 30 years newer.
Not directly, I worked for American Axle..... current producer of most of GM's driveshafts, and former part of GM's Saginaw Division.
When I recently stripped the black paint from the drive shaft on my 69 GS400 4speed the stripes were still visible.There were 2 black stripes,1 was 1/2" the other nearly 3/4" wide and they were 1 1/2" apart. gary
