I've been fighting with this drive shaft and trans for 4 days now, they wont freakin mate up. I dropped the engine and trans in as one unit my dad says I should have put the trans and the drive shaft in together than the engine.. if i have to back track that far I'm going to kill somthing....

 

what do you mean driveshaft and transmission? the driveshaft just slides in!
unbolt it from the axle if its not already.

 

thats what I thought some one would say, i tried that and cant get the bolts to budge. is there a trick here? (using 4 jack stands and two floor jacks plus a chery picker and load leveler, I should be able to do this.. i'm thinking i may have to break the impact wrench )

 

you mean the four little 10mm bolts that hold the u joints in around the driveshaft by the rear end?

 

PB blaster on the bolts. Have someone hold the trans end of the shaft with a long pry bar thru where the universal joint is while you get the bolts loose. Also might wanna try using the parking brake if you have one.

 

those bolts should not be that tight, i can get under just about any car and crack those bolts loose with a wrench without a cheater bar, if u have to use an air ratchet or lil 3/8's impact gun to zip them out which u will prolly have to do since the wheels are off the round and the pinion yoke will just spin when u try to break the bolts free

 

 

This is not that hard! Lower the rear of the car to the ground, slide in there and loosen the u-bolts, if they are stuck try PB blaster and some heat, if still stuck, cut the u-bolts off! Pull the driveshaft down, or tap w/hammer if stuck. The u-bolts are available for under $10 apiece @ many auto parts stores.

 

if you cant get em out with a head on them why would you cut them , then youll never get em out...use the impact

 

25" breaker bar Thusfar undefeated by any bolt I've come across And if the heads are or do strip, get a socket set for stripped heads, tap it onto the head of the bolt, and it will come right out, the hard part is removing the bolt from the socket afterward...

 

You ever broken a bolt with that thing? That's huge!

 

these guys are on there good (I was doing a one handed pull up on it, i weigh about 145lbs) i'll get a can of pb blaster and see if that helps. this thing has sat the last 5 years in my dads back yard so.. and on top of that its an 1985 modle so, its a quarter century old and to my knowledge these are the orginal factory installed bolts lol. i'd be just as soon to put in an aluminum drive shaft if i had one. but time is of the esence as my wife is not happy its not done yet lol.

 

If you cut the u-bolt and whack it w/ a hammer it'll come right off. I don't know about you, but $10 in parts is well spent vs. a couple of hrs worth of fighting w/ stuck bolts! like i said before : " it's not that hard!"

 

thats amazing that those bolts are stuck...if i remember correctly when i did my 5 speed swap i took those bolts out with and open end wrench

 

like i said this car has sat literally for 5 years in my dads back yard lol

 

How did you get the old trans out while leaving the driveshaft bolted to the rear axle?

 

ive done it before
the ds will drop right out the back of the trans if u pull the motor and trans as one piece

 

Hey man don't get too discouaged. It's always the stupid simple stuff that'll get ya
It just slides out of the tailshaft

 

That seems like it would be the harder way to do it, but I guess if the bolts are stuck what choice do you have

 

I thought it would have bound up. The driveshaft is normally the first thing I take off the car when pulling a trans.

 

when I started this I had help (five years ago, the plan was to convert to a V8, i had a 4 bolt main 350 new carb intake, carb, cam, pistions, the works, just never got the mounts, or correct trans. then sold it all to go back to a V6 i'm just needing this thing to run again)

We did pull the engine and trans together thats why i thought it would be a simple drop in to get every thing back together. damn cars. will be working on it again tomarrow after work

 

There is a way you could get it done without dropping the back of the driveshaft. But it really sucks and you need 2 people. Have 1 person hold the front of the shaft up while another swings the engine/trans in together. If you do it just right, you can get the driveshaft to go in the trans. We did this on my buddys supra. He for some reason thought it would be faster that way despite my assurance it was not. But I didn't car much since I was the one swinging the engine

 

well we got the driveshaft into the tail housing now i need to figure out why its an inch short of mating back to the rear axle....

 

pull it closer to the axle then..

 

only 25'' girlie man breaker bar man time to upgrade to the breaker bar of the gods 32'' snap-on (insert godly sound bit here) i use it to take off crank pulleys and when someone... "forgets" to pay its the best remember in the world.

 

I had the same problem i swapped to a 350 from a v6 and installed the th350 attached to the motor... it was the most frustrating thing ever getting the driveshaft to slide in right and when i did get it in there it wasnt flush there was about a 1 inch gap between the driveline and the tailshaft...i thought it was because i had a short tailshaft but if i had a long one, then the driveline would be too long????

 

well honestly the driveshaft never really just slid in for us.. it was persuaded wiht a 5lb mallet...

 

have you gotten this any farther? i cant get my driveshaft in, i still need to push the yolk into the tranny about another inch but it keeps stopping at one spot and i can even get it to move anymore( iv been using a rubber mallet and a sludge hammer........)

 

my driveshaft went all the way in but its too short

 

i've offically given up, my moms mechanic is going to come look at it sunday. none of my harness is matching up either...

 

The driveshaft doesn't have to be seated all the way into the transmission. That is why the shaft is splined. Slide it back out until the shaft fits into the yolk and bolt it up. If it had no freeplay, you would probably snap the trans mount as soon as your rear suspension took a decent hit from a pothole.