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Question: Should I fix a driveshaft myself or take it to a specialist?
At Midwest Driveshaft quite often customers will bring us drive shafts that the customer has replaced a mid ship bearing or one or more u-joints. The most common complaint we hear from these customers is "Why does the shaft still vibrate?" Well, there are a number of reasons this happens.
Most domestic drive shafts will develop vibrations about half way into the vehicles life span, say around 100,000 miles. Our feeling is this is due to the high amount of horse power on domestic vehicles and the additional stress created by overdrive transmissions.
Light duty auto and truck drive shafts tend to develop vibrations due to wearing of components. If not corrected this may eventually lead to drive shaft failure.
Drive shafts can also become bent (out of round). This is quite common in two piece designs. If a mid ship bearing in a two piece shaft is replaced and the spline is not straightened the shaft will continue to vibrate. If u-joints are replaced on these shafts the center line of the shaft is often changed due to slight differences in the u-joints. Hence an out of center line condition may exist. These shafts need to be balanced to eliminate vibration.
One common misconception is that drive shafts are manufactured without the u-joints installed. Customers will bring us a shaft, minus the u-joints, asking us to re balance or modify. The u-joints are a critical element in the manufacturing and balancing of all drive shafts. Good quality, preferably new, u-joints are required in the balancing, manufacturing and modifying of drive shafts. Please note that aftermarket u-joints and mid ship bearings quite often do not hold factory required tolerances thus they are not a "good deal". To help clarify factory recommended tolerance, please note that mid ship bearings should be .003 or less on run out and tubing should be .02 or less. We at Midwest Driveshaft like to see tubing at .01 or less.
If drive shafts are beyond the above specifications we have two options to correct the resulting bent (out of round) condition.
Option 1: Re straighten where the bend exists.
Option 2: Re tube the shaft.
Answer: If you have the option of taking your drive shaft to a specialist it would be the wisest choice.
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