All 58-64 chevys had the pinion pointing down. GM made a mistake? My 60 chevy worked just fine for 280000 miles.
So Andy would that be "down" to the rear or "down" to the front Help me out here - I have tequila and matches ready
31Vicky, If you really want to do something crazy and destructive, a cat in the microwave is good! (clean up the mess before the wife gets home) It doesn't matter if the pinion and engine angles are parallel or intersecting, as long as the angles are the same (measured off from true horizontal) and if you are using the intersecting angles the point of intersection must be half way between the U-joints. (this is the hard part to accomplish and why most are set up parallel)
Didn't those Chevies have two piece driveshafts? That's a game-changer. I think some people are confusing driveshaft angle for U-joint angles. The driveshaft angle (versus earth's level) doesn't matter, it can go up, down, sideways, or any way it wants. What matters is the difference of the angles of the input and output yokes(transmission and differential). Those angles should be the same whole number, but opposite directions.
did you check to see if the guy that made your driveshaft placed the front and rear yokes aligned true?????
"... did you check to see if the guy that made your driveshaft placed the front and rear yokes aligned true????? " ^^^ ... good point. The yokes also need to be in phase.
The Chevy driveshafts are interesting because the pinions are down which blows a hole in the dogma that absolutly they must be up. The factory manuals with the factory angles and tolerances are hard to understand but I have looked at them for some time. The angles between the trans and the front driveshaft and the angle between the front shaft and the rear shaft add up to the angle between the back shaft and the pinion. Why do the front two angles add and the pinion angle cancels them out? It is because the jokes on the front shaft are not parallel. They are at 90*. The pivot point for most rear suspensions is in front of the axle. Having the pinion down reduces the the amout of change in the relative joint angles when the suspension moves. With the pinion up, as the rear goes up over a bump, the trans joint sees more angle and the rear joint sees less. Bad deal for bagged cars. The joints stay at better angles with the pinion down.
The guy that built the driveshaft has been doing it for many many moons. Everyone that I had talked to about a custom driveshaft pointed me to his direction The way he builds a driveshaft he uses no external weights to balance it. There are people that have been using his driveshafts for over 30 years now without any problem and I have not heard of anyone with problems from one of his driveshafts. This abnormal wear pattern has been going on the past 2 years as far as i can tell. The parts have been together on the car for quite a while so it is just frustrating.
Your problem is the 8 inch ford sometimes take a 1-1/8" cap. you have a 1-1/16" cap in a 1-1/8 hole you tighten ubols up and make the cap oval out.Look were the wear is not on the side that the driveshaft torques to.Its hard to measure the 1/2 hole in the yoke find a peice 1-1/8 and see if it fits the yoke.Darrell
You know, it looks like the 'pair' of ends that wore in the pattern, might have been too tight. Why are the other ends not harmed if it were from mis-align issues? I'm with the previous post from Darrell on this.
That guy is also a human and CAN make a mistake,,Wont cost you anything to check out the phase on your driveshaft rather than ASSUME its good..I have been doing this for over 60 years and I can still make a mistake.
Up or down doesn't matter, just that each end be opposite angle of the other. If the transmission goes up, then the differential pinion goes down. The reason the angles need to be opposite and cancel each other out is because U-Joints are not constant velocity joints. The joints cause the driveshaft speed to oscillate, and the oscillation varies with the amount of angle the joint is bent to. Oscillation causes vibration. The second joint (with an equal but opposite angle) will cancel out the oscillation vibration. This is why the angles on a three joint shaft will still need to be supplementary (add up to zero degrees)--- thereby cancelling out the vibration.
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