I have determined that mine is bent or stretched, it keeps breaking u joints in the exact same way every time, the needle bearings get smashed and the shaft inside the U joint itself gets flattened, then comes the vibration, and me getting pissed off, buying another U joint and doing it all over again... only for it to last another 2 weeks.

I looked at my ponion yoke really well last time I had the driveshaft out and it looks a little skewed to one side. It just so happen to start doing this the weekend I took it to MIR. Thats the only thing I have not changed or adjusted...

the pinion angle isnt perfect but its at about 2*, I think 3* is optimal if I remember correctly. but only one side of the U joint is doing this, the other side looks brand new, which is another reason leading me to a bad yoke...

My question- damn I'm long winded- I have a yoke off one of my old rearends that looks to be in great shape, do I need to get a new pinion nut? or anything else or do I just need to unscrew the old one off... pull the yoke and slide a new one on, reset the pre-load, and go?? my rear's starting to develop a little slack in it too, could I just re-shim it and make it live a little longer? or leave it be....

 

I think you need a new crush sleeve for new pinion yolk. You probably also need to determine where the slop is coming from.. the LSD or gears itself. If it were the gears, you might be able to shim it.

Funny thing is, I have a lot of slop in my rear end too...

 

I need to order a new crush sleeve and pinion nut from what I hear.. the entire carrier and everything has to come out and be re-shimmed anyway...

 

to do it correctly, you'll need a new crush sleeve and pinion nut. You set the pinion bearing preload with only the pinion gear installed in the housing. Do you have a picture of the yoke you think is bad?

 

no, but its ugly LOL... its got hot spots on it from the U joint cap moving around under load... the needle bearings in there are shot... if you look through some of my recent threads in here, the last one I took out came out in my hand like black powder... it was not pretty... everything else but the yoke has been changed, thats another thing leading me to this.