U Joints

[73_Opel_GT_Guy]

Before I destroy something I found nothing here as it relates to removing a ujoint from a drive shaft. Is it brute force or have I missed something

[David McCollam]

The u-joints on an Opel driveshaft are held in place by plastic injection. The driveshaft was designed to be replaced as a unit, or so it seems. There are larger commercial shops that have the experience and equipment to replace the u-joints on these type of driveshaft.

Do not take it to a shop and have them say, we can just replace it with a standard u-joint. Bill Hoffmann tried this on his conversion to a Getrag. He took the shaft to a shop for trimming to length and gave specific instructions on the process to shorten the driveshaft. He ended up with a disaasembled shaft that was unrepairable by the shop and had to bring them another driveshaft.

It can be done, but make certain that the shop knows exactly what is involved.

Good luck,

Dave

[namba209]

Dave's right on. I was lucky enuff to have the San Diego Driveline folks here know their stuff. So when I took the drive shaft in for Willit?, they got a new rear U-joint from OGTS and modified the shaft for the T-5 output shaft to the Opel torque tube. Tim, the owner swears the new modified shaft will not break, but IDK, it's awful short.

[WannaBOpelOwner]

i have done this on a chevy s-10 you have to take some kind of torch and melt the plastic out..... you will know when you have melted it out it ooooozs out. the when it cools down pop the cap out then take the u-joint out.

[Gary]

Originally Posted by David McCollam ...Do not take it to a shop and have them say, we can just replace it with a standard u-joint. Bill Hoffmann tried this on his conversion to a Getrag. He took the shaft to a shop for trimming to length and gave specific instructions on the process to shorten the driveshaft. He ended up with a disaasembled shaft that was unrepairable by the shop and had to bring them another driveshaft.

I spoke with Bill about this at Carlisle. He followed the advice that I got from a driveshaft shop that the front yoke from Opel auto d-shaft was standard GM. Evidently the diameter and number of splines are the same, but the machining is not. The GM yoke binds on the Getrag rear spline. It may be a machining clearance issue with the splines having a bevel at the top of one style and not the other.

I need to find my Getrag conversion post and correct that info.

[GTJIM]

Used to make quite a bit of money out of replacing the plastic bonded UJs with circlip ones by boring out the yokes and cutting circlip grooves before rebuild kits became available ...... mainly on UK sourced Ford Escorts which used a similar 'never-need-replacing' UJ.