Rear drive shaft rear yoke linear movement?

[ribbits]

I was removing my rear drive shaft from the diff. yesterday and noticed that while prying the u-joint out of the diff. yoke it only would move forward about 1" to 1-1/2" before bottoming out? There is a lots of movement in the splines towards the rear but not much towards the front? I'm running a NP435 with a NP205 case and i'm pretty sure it's a custom driveshaft.. My question is will the 1-1/2" travel towards the x-fer case be enough??? Could there be enough flex in the frame while trial riding to cause the shaft to "bottom out" ??? Is my drive shaft too long??? Thanks to all..

 

[DirtDonk]

I don't have specific travel measurements to give you, but it sounds like it will be ok. When compressing the suspension, the movement is towards the rear (leaf springs flattening and shackle extending) but when the suspension droops and the springs pivot on the front bolt, they "might" get some forward movement. But it should not be enough to overcome the fact that the shat is just pivoting on the joint and not really compressing a lot.

Now that's just SWAG on my part, as I've never in all these years, even after meaning to get 'roundtoit, gone to the trouble of cycling a suspension up and down to see what the shaft does.
I think you need more rearward travel then forward though, which it sounds like yours has.

Good luck. Others that have played around with this should be able to answer definitively. I'm just throwing that out there to get this back to the top of the page.

Paul

 

[ribbits]

Thank you Dirtdonk,, kinda what I was thinking too.. But I just don't know enough to know what I don't know .... And that scares the hell out of me??

 

[DirtDonk]

No problemo. Just make sure you get more opinions (and average out the answers%) ) before you go jumping off any 50' sand dunes!

Out of curiosity too, how is yours set up? Stock or lifted? Original transmissions, or different ones swapped in? Anything that would effect your driveshaft.

Paul