Well here’s tonight’s dilemma. Pulled the rear drive shaft out last night because I was going to try and get some grease into the joint. After scraping away a pound or so of grease/mud, I could see some slop in the joint. I’d bet the u-joints haven’t been greased in 20 years nor the spring shackles.
So the stubs on the trunyon are supposed to be precision ground and they looked like 25 sided polygons. I’m surprised the needles aren’t all ground up.
So I’m explaining to the wife that I might as well just go ahead and replace all of them and the center bearing while I got her up on the stands and half tore down already. Then we won’t have to worry about the drive line. I’m telling her they shouldn’t run more than $10 or $12 each from a casual glance at a couple of catalogs that I have gotten in the last week. I guess that would be true if we had a ½ ton, except for the front one inside the ball, that one runs a whapping $175 and I think I saw a price of $225 exchange from one vendor.
The worst part is, there are none listed for the 3600, at any price. I spent around an hour on the net trying to find u-joints for a 1950 Chevy 3600 and came up empty. The rear and center are just standard Universal joints, I mean really, how many different sizes could they posably come up with for U joints? They don’t look like anything special and now I’m hoping that when I get the center support out that I can find one at Berry Bearing. The seals are gonna be another story, as is the front joint.
What are you guys with the heavy iron doing out there for drive line parts?
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL

Denny G
Sandwich, IL