[McNaughty87]

So after a long while of being parked up, due to some medical problems I had.
I finally got around to replacing the uni joints on the rear tail shaft of my 1995 Sierra, 1.3L.

Thing is, im about to install the tailshaft, when I realised that I never made any markings to line it up

Have I completely screwed up or is there a way I can install without giving me even more headaches?

Please help a suzuki newbie and mechanically challenged bloke out.

Appreciate your time for reading this & any advice I might get.

Cheers,
Dan

[Coyote]

If you have no way of determining which position it was in then it will be trial and error, basically fit it up, take it for a slow run (Very) until you are confident there is no vibration, if you jag it leave it as is, if you have a vibration undo it, move it to the next position and start your trial again, hopefully you will jag it LOL Pain in the butt to do too many times...

Don't forget to retorque all connections you played with during the install after a short while.

ANY vibration, slow quickly and check it breaking these things gets quite entertaining....

[McNaughty87]

So, I bit the bullet and just had a crack.
Either I got super lucky or it doesn't matter to much about marking it.

Test drive gave me no problems, vibrations or shuddering.

That said, I did only get to about 75K's, so I guess I could have issues at higher speeds?

[Brenno]

as long as both ends are mounted in line, i.e the ears of each end are matching, then its usually good to go.

[McNaughty87]

Coyote wrote:

If you have no way of determining which position it was in then it will be trial and error, basically fit it up, take it for a slow run (Very) until you are confident there is no vibration, if you jag it leave it as is, if you have a vibration undo it, move it to the next position and start your trial again, hopefully you will jag it LOL Pain in the butt to do too many times...

Don't forget to retorque all connections you played with during the install after a short while.

ANY vibration, slow quickly and check it breaking these things gets quite entertaining....

I did start off very slow, just crawling in 1st off the ramps and out of the shed, into the lane. No bad noises or anything so edged up to 2nd and still had no issues. 3rd and 4th gear were okay too.
Hopefully I got lucky and it'll be okay.
Will have to do a bit more testing when I get back from work in a few weeks.

I'll definitely re-torque the connections. That would be an embarrassing thing for me to forget

[McNaughty87]

Brenno wrote:

as long as both ends are mounted in line, i.e the ears of each end are matching, then its usually good to go.

Cheers. Fingers crossed that dumb luck saved my arse on that one.
Certainly won't be making the mistake of not marking it again

[Gwagensteve]

There is no trial and error involved at all.

[McNaughty87]

Gwagensteve wrote:

There is no trial and error involved at all.

Well it was definitely some dumb luck on my behalf.

Thanks folks.

Hope I don't embarrass myself much more in the future

[sideways]

All the Sierra tailshafts I've had apart had match marks from the factory. There's a dot on the end of the male piece and the side of the female one. They're kinda a pain because you have to clean the grease off to see them and you can't see them when the boot is on anyway. If you just line the yokes up like steves photo that's fine and nothing to worry about. Some cars have them at odd angles but sierras don't.

Out of interest I bought a new genuine rear shaft and it was assembled with the match marks 180 degrees out. I left it like that as I thought it might have been balanced that way. It came in sealed genuine parts packaging so I don't think someone had it apart before. Kinda odd anyway.