Everyone talks about using a double u joint to eleminate vibration in the drive shaft. Since they seem to be a rare item, only coming on a selected few cruisers, what about using the bolt up flange from the top and bottom of a driveshaft as a joint bolted between the transfer and drive shaft. Sort of a
I+II+{=====}+I. Any thoughts?

the deal with the carden as i understand it, is the little ball and socket in it. you wouldnt have that with your set-up and i dont know if it would work, go ask jess at the general 4x talk.

Thought about that. I was goig to try it but the problem is there is no ball and socket to support the shaft. It will just flop around.

An idea I had was to use a birfield there. Cut the axle shaft down and put a flange the end at the TC. On the outer "socket" of the birfield I cut the shaft off and welded that to the slip joint. The idea was fine, my workmanship wasnt!! I warped the flange when I welded it to the axle. I greased it up with moly grease and used a toyota camry CV boot.

I ended up picking up some double cardan shafts real cheap so I did not progress any further with the birfield.

The idea of the birfield will be strong enough because where it is used in the diff it is working against the mechanical disadvantage of the tyre. In the driveshaft situation it is woking with the mechanical advantage of the diff. Other advantages of the birfield are a that it has a very high angle and being a Constant Velocity joint you can run it very high angles without the velocity fluctuations that a uni joint has.

As soon as I get a chance I am going to re-do my birfield driveshaft.

Has anyone else ever done this??

okay- in the front applications mainly lets forget about using a c/v for two main reasons- first is this - most of you are soa and then some (6" lift or more) and most have an sm-420 trans and adapter from what i have seen- the c/v will not clear most adapters for one- and, # two the c/v will not handle the excessive angles on the front plus lots of flex on top of that- on to the rear shafts and most years of rigs here- (70-78) they have a drum on the back -making it easy to run a c/v off a late modle toyota mini truck ifs- these c/v's are strong and handle the angles on the rear quite well on most conversions- but you do have to re-drill the bolt pattern which we do all the time- the top post i think you had an idea on what your were thinking but its not prcatical in most of these conversions - just use this type of c/v and its a snap- also make your rear diff angle about 2 degree's down from the driveline angle and it will run smooth- Jesse

So you think the mini-truck CV is strong enough to live as the rear driveshaft in a Cruiser? I am going to try it, but I was unsure of the strength.

Is there certain years the mini shaft needs to come off of? are we talking about the front shaft or rear? Thanks, Matt

front shaft from IFS trucks is what i hear.

I think he means the front shaft from a 79-85 toyota mini truck, it's allready a short driveline with a cv on the t-case.

and when he says to re-drill the bolt pattern he means pull your studs from your E-break drum and re-install them in the rite pattern. I wonder if you can swap the pinion flange between the mini truck and a land cruiser, that would make it real simple!