hey im roanokemav...i had to make a new name cause something's wrong and i cant get on the board with my old name....but here goes.. I need help bad!!!! i need to know why my 1971 maverick grabber w/ 302 is eating up the u-joints... 3 months ago i replaced mine with a regular one....then 1 week ago i replaced it with a brute force one from advance auto... it's gone now...my car is only eating the rear u joint so i think something might be out of allignment and the pitch is wrong..thats all i can figure.. when you replace the u joint the car runs perfectly smooth, no vibrations at all....so nothing can be unbalanced or anything. so i need to figure out what's going on! i dunno. but it's frustrating any comments or answers would be greatly appreciated..thanks.. Dan.
The only thing I can think thats causing it is to make sure that the U-bolts are properly tighten and grease them up good. You might be getting some bad u joints.
What's the pinion vs. driveshaft angle when the car sits on the ground? Mine's about 5 deg, and my u-joints last a decent amount of time. Not perfect, but decent. I'm pretty hard on it.
If you have a good shift kit expect to go through u joints. If you have a sloppy rear end expect to go through u joints. If you drive it like a race car expect to go through u joints. If you have a bad pinionangle expect to go through U joints. If you roll and smoke it expect to go through at least one joint
I got well over 100,000 miles out of my original U-joints and my current U-joints have about 75,000 miles on them. My car shifts hard too (always has). I think that pinion angle or just plain abuse could be the reason for your problem...
ujoints well my car doesnt sit level....3 years ago i put leaf spring helpers on it so the back sits up a little bit. i checked and made sure the bolts were properly torqued and i did grease it. my car has a shift kit in it since i got it rebuilt at a tranny shop a year ago. it didnt go through them untill i got it rebuilt. i figured it was the rearend but the car runs so smooth with a new u joint.... i drive my car everyday and i can be hard on the car at times but not often since i want her to last...lol. she'll chirp 2nd with the shift kit but i dont do it tooo often...but even with the stronger u joints it doesnt last.. oh and it only eats one side of the u joint. everytime i replace it i notice that one end is missing all the bearings and the caps screwed up... thanks. dan.
are you replacing them or having a shop do it? the reason i ask is they might be a little slack on putting the cap on . maybe the yoke is damaged...frank...
I agree with Frank, problem either in the pinion yoke or the driveshaft yoke. Are the new joints installed by pressing in the cups or by the old standby, hammer and socket approach? One other thought is to check the rear motor mount also and string the wheel base on both sides, have seen the spring center bolt bend or shear enough to allow the rear axle to shift out of alignment.
Is the u-joint breaking across where the zirc fitting goes in? If so (and i learned the hard way myself before someone told me) there is a right and a wrong way to install a u-joint. The zirc needs to be in the Pinch area of the yokes to work correctly without having a weak link. In my old Falcon I had the same problem except it wasnt breaking it with the old 240 straight six in it but it was actually streching the u-joint and making the zirc fitting fall out causing premature wear. I had to put a new one in it about every three months until someone told me. Now lets see if i can get this right.......(guys help me out here, the rearend yoke turns clockwise to turn the wheels forward right?LOL cant rember but am pretty sure) if you sit facing the rearend from the front of the car the zirc fitting should go to the right of the driveshaft yoke and to the right of the rearend yoke. That puts it in a position that when under high torque it is in a pinch position instead of a pull postion. The weakest part of the u-joint is where the zirc fitting is.
yea it was something like that was a little smaller than a 250 but cant remember the displacement on it now been too long ago haha
you had me curious now so i had to go look......LOL it was a 170 six cylinder the big motor then was the 200 inline HAHA
