Feburary of this year I lucked into an SLP take-off rear for my car. I only paid $500 for it from SLP through Ebay and consittering my posi was shot and the gears were winning, It was a great deal.

A few weeks after the new rear was installed I had the missfurtune of throwing the driveshaft at nearly 150mph. A u-joint strap bolt on the rear yoke had worked it's self loose causing this:

And this:


I ordered the damaged peice of exhaust pipe from Borla for $65 and a forum member gave me a stock steel driveshaft for shipping of $18. He told me his car had a vibration at 80mph that he thought the driveshaft was to blame. I figured he exagerating a bit as my car shook like crazy at speeds over 65mph.

Assuming the driveshaft was bent I ordered an aluminum shaft from Summit for $350. This did not fix the shaking and led me to what I thought was the final problem. I had bent the shaft on the pinion gear (how many people have done that??). I purchased a set of used gears from a forum member for $50 that had low milage on them.

I installed the gears, put a dial indicator on the driveshaft and it was still off. On top of everything else I messed up, I bent the yoke on the real end too. One Ebay buy and $30 later I had one. Problem was the Air Force sent me to Charleston AFB SC for a month so I had to wait to finish the repair.

Today I finally got the car together and took it for a drive. It was smooth as glass with absolutely no gear whine. Kinda sad that I spent almost as much fixing the crap I broke as I spent on the rear.

There's a lesson to be learned here. After major projects ALWAYS recheck bolts at least once a week for a few weeks. You might find something you missed, or catch something that worked it's self loose. I say that because I know that bolt was tight originally, I set the parking brake so I could tighten them.

Re'

 

Look at it this way. It could have been much worse. Dropping a drive line at high speed could have been much more ugly. Glad you are back on the road, and have all your limbs and bits and pieces.

 

[QUOTE=RE AND CHERYL]Feburary of this year I lucked into an SLP take-off rear for my car. I only paid $500 for it from SLP through Ebay and consittering my posi was shot and the gears were winning, It was a great deal.


Are you talking about a whole rear end or a posi unit? I don't recall SLP changing out the complete rear end for an upgrade.

 

Your right, SLP only added a posi and the diff cover. To speed up the transformation, they swaped out the entire rear end with one that was removed from another car and had the posi changed and the cover installed. This was easier than trying to change the posi unit with the rear in the car. The mechanic I talked to said they could change the rear in about 30 min or so. Then the posi unit was swaped and the rear would be put back in another car.

They probably had 20 or so rears on racks when I got mine.

 

got it

 

I add loctite to my U-joint bolts to keep them from vibrating loose. I did have a clutch fork failure from the bolt that hold the clutch pivot point working it's way out That wasn't a fun fix as it destroyed my slave cylinder and I had to pull the tranny to replace (and loctite!) that bolt.