Hi folks,
I have an '89 Grand Wagoneer with a 6 inch BJ's lift and a stock 360/727/NP229 drivetrain. A couple of weeks ago I was driving home from the butcher shop, thankfully on a pretty quiet street, and I heard a loud clang and a series of smaller clangs and had no power. I coasted it maybe 40-45 ft into the nearest parking lot, and found my driveshaft lying on the ground. It's the first pic here:
http://imgur.com/a/GkcM4
Uh-oh. I had the car towed immediately over to my mechanic’s shop. He brought the rear driveshaft over to the driveshaft shop to be checked out, and they told him the rear shaft was slightly bent and needed to be replaced (to the tune of a few hundred $$$). I'm pretty sure he had to get a new U-joint, and I assume he bought new hardware and straps for it while he was there, but I'll double check next time I see him.
Yesterday I received a call from my mechanic, and he says that the front yoke on the rear driveshaft needs to be replaced, but his usual local suppliers don't have them. I went over to his shop where I picked up the yoke so I can take some measurements. As you can see in the second and third pics in that album, the yoke definitely has some unusual wear on it. Is that part just called a slip yoke or rear transfer case yoke or is there some other special name for it?
I sent an email over to the FSJ email list (those guys rock), and they suggested that the abnormal wear was the result of too steep a driveline angle. Visually that makes sense to me. They also suggested that the solution was to convert to a CV style shaft. Do you guys agree with that? Since I already had a new rear driveshaft made, that’s not too appealing to me. Is there such a thing as a high angle transfer case yoke that has more tolerance? I honestly don’t do any hard core wheeling, but I hate having to replace the same parts over and over again. What do the off-road gurus suggest?
Lastly when searching for stock replacements I ran across a few different part numbers listed from Dana-Spicer.
https://www.summitracing.com/parts/sdh- ... /overview/
or
http://www.oreillyauto.com/site/c/detai ... &ppt=C0362
or maybe this Crown part is right:
https://www.summitracing.com/parts/cwa- ... rocess-229
Do you guys know which the correct one for our application is?
Thank you in advance for the advice!