7mg4me

I have a 1990 pickup with the 63" chevy spring swap in the rear. I love it, but my rear drive shaft is literally hanging on by about 1/8 inch. With the vehicle on the ground the total length of it should be just under 48". So I went to the local scrap yard and picked up a 47 3/4" long drive shaft off a 96 4 Runner and it looked like it had the same 4 bolts in a square pattern as the one on my truck, but when i got it home and all hooked up i noticed that one end was slightly larger than I needed it to be.



The last pic just shows how much the bolts are off by.



Is there some kind of fix i can do, i.e. swap out the u joints, or just drill/open the holes to accommodate the larger patter? I am kind of new to off-roading, so any help is greatly appreciated.


Pic 1: http://imgur.com/6IKXL (The link incase the pic didn't work)


Pic 2: http://imgur.com/b3snH

abecedarian

I was going to embed them for you, but they're too big.

I don't know if you can just switch the flanges.

racerflea

Ur axel location should not have moved u should have moved ur spring mounts but left tbe axel in the same location

7mg4me

The axle is in the same spot, but because the tranny is on the body which was raised it separated due to the increased angle it sits at.

MudHippy

You can't swap the u-joint flanges between the driveshafts because the double cardan u-joints are slightly smaller than the type that fits all the other driveshaft yokes. Other than that, you could(you usually can if it's not a CV/double cardan joint). The only thing you can do to make it work is rotate the driveshaft 45°-90° from the original holes and drill new holes in the transfer case/pinion flange.

Or spend $40 on one of these triple drilled flanges.

http://www.marlincrawler.com/differe...rential-flange

7mg4me

Sweet that looks like it'll be the solution. Hmmm $40 bucks and a quick swap, or pain in the a#$ drilling? Not a tough choice there. Thanks a ton Mudhippy and everyone else.

MudHippy

I hope I didn't just point you in the wrong direction. Maybe you haven't ordered it yet. Or maybe you figured this out on your own. Or maybe you want a differential flange and not a transfer case flange(for whatever reason, less holes but cheaper maybe?). I don't know, but I might have screwed you up. Depending on what your situation is. As in which type of transfer case output shaft you have(gear drive: 27 spline vs. chain drive: 30 spline). Because you have a driveshaft with the 4 cyl. bolt pattern I figured you had a 4 cyl. transfer case, which are almost always gear drive(and use a 27 spline flange just like all 8" differentials do). But I happen to know(first hand, seen it myself) that the 4 cyl bolt hole pattern has been found before on V6(chain drive) t-case output shafts(which have 30 splines, and can't be swapped with 8" differential flanges). And you can also upgrade a gear drive t-case to a 30 spline rear output shaft(don't know if you've done that either).

This triple drilled flange is for differentials specifically. But it should also work with any 27 spline t-case output shaft. The only difference would be the dust sheild...AFAIK.


This is the 27 spline quintuple drilled transfer case flange(notice the different dust sheild).

http://www.marlincrawler.com/axle/dr...-spline-flange

Chain drive transfer cases have 30 spline output shafts though. So they make a quadruple drilled transfer case flange for those. The output shafts on chain drive t-cases also use a small internal oil seal(under the nut) that gear drive t-cases don't...AFAIK.

http://www.marlincrawler.com/axle/dr...-spline-flange