today i was painting under the car using por-15. i wonder if i took out the drive shaft to replace the u-joints if i grind the rust off the shaft will i have too have it balanced after i clean it up. also if i paint it will i screw it up.
Shouldn't hurt it unless its rusted really bad. My friend painted a swirl down the drive shaft on his 4X4 truck. Looks wild when you drive along next to him going down the road. To bad you can't see the drive shaft in Mavericks. I would suggest getting the ass end of your car up in the air as far as possible. When you pull the shaft, the fluid will come out the back of the transmission.
And mark your shaft and differential so you put it back on IN PHASE. I thought this was bs, but read a post from yesterday, and you will find that I no longer think it is bs.
My Grabber's Driveshaft is "out-of-phase" although I can't tell ... I just know I didn't mark when I pulled out the C4 and put in the Toploader ....
DM, dissconnect the u-joint and spin it 180 at the differential, and put it back on. That is all I did, and it made a world of difference.
But it feels fine now with no issues ... why should I flip it? What I am saying is that I didn't mark anything when I pulled the driveshaft out and changed both the tranny and the rearend and I have no problem.
Dan, I guess me and you just got really lucky. I've swapped my shaft and transmission, both the shaft and trans are out of 2 diffrent cars. I've not had a problem either... I've always thought sincing the shafts was just for trucks like my F250 where there are 2 seperate shafts that connect together half way under the truck. The 2 shafts are balanced together and if you pull one out and put it back in wrong, it will be out of balance with the front shaft.
I am just making the point that I think it is BS ... I have had driveshafts in and out of other cars including my Grabber ... never marked anything and never had any problems ..
It is only 50/50 if you do not touch the rear end while the driveshaft is out ... Otherwise it is 1 in 26 (26 splines) that you get it in exactly like it came out ....
If your driveshaft is balanced correctly it does not matter how its installed.?? If you over tighen your u-bolts on the axle side and pinch the caps to hard so the needle bearings do not work correctly you are going to have U-joint problems and feel vibration and binding. A local shop here told me to tighten all the bolts snug and evenly and then take a wrench and use you pinky finger to pull down on each nut to gauge how tight. If you crank them down hard it will create problems.
Maybe my experience was just coincidence. But, I took the driveshaft off at least 3 times, once to sandblast and paint (sticking to the thread here!), once to swap u-joints, and once to rebuild the differential (gear change). I don't know if it always shimmied at high speeds because I don't go fast too often. But it shimmied here in the past few months, but after rotating it this last time, I don't feel shimmy until up around 100mph, and then it is only a light shimmy, possibly out-of-balance tire.
I got a driveshaft at a junkyard that was laying in the back of a truck. he had piles of them. it didnt have a yoke on either end. I brought it home, put my yoke on it and new ujoints at both ends, slapped it in there... no problems? As long as it's balanced i dont see how it'd matter which end is which.... I'll go read those articles and see if it can prove me anything.