tight u-joint

[riverside red]

New u-joints,new flange,rear half-shafts,one seems perfect,one is rather tight.Will this losen up after a few miles

 

[Tyler Townsley]

I have tapped on a wood workbench on the ends after getting the clips installed in shaft to help losen it before install. IE Make the ujoint center push the cap against the clip.

Tyler

 

[IH2LOSE]

What is tight just one of the Joints? could you have lost one of the needle bearing while installing it? Could one of slipped and is now crushed inside the cap.

I can tell you personally for me
Any thing that just doesnt feel right useally isnt.Now may be the time to pull it back apart (even if it means a new u joint).Good luck and lets see what the others suggest

 

[WayneC]

After you've installed the U-joints and flanges on the half-shafts, use a steel hammer to lightly but firmly tap the half-shaft (or flange) "ears" that are bored for the U-joint caps... tap around the base of the ears (not on the caps themselves) where you won't hurt anything and the vibrations should cause the joint to loosen up. Do this while holding the half-shaft (or flange, whichever one you intend to strike) up in the air with your other hand... NOT with the half-shaft on a bench or up against some other solid object. The caps sometimes get "cocked" a bit in the bores, and causing vibration by tapping the ears near the base of the bore tends to allow them to align better with the cross-shaft.

 

[critchie]

How'd you do the U-joint? The old squeeze in a bench vise way? That's how I always did them. One day I had a machine shop do them. When the owner was giving me back the driveshaft, he proudly showed me how easily they moved. I asked him if that was important, because with my bench vise way, they didn't always turn out that way, and I figured they would loosen and work themselves out with a few miles. He looked at me like I was a Neanderthal. He then explained to me that the bench vise method squeezes the flanges together. With the flanges now closer together, you've got to squeeze the U-joint cap tight in order to get the clips on. That's what makes them tight. That leads to vibration and early failure. The way the machine shop does them is to support the flange while the U-joint is pushed out with a press.