Bdeliman

I bought a set of Spicer universal joints for the halfshafts on my 65. The universals pressed into the half shafts without a problem. But they seem too big to fit into the halfshaft flanges. I checked with a straight edge to see if the back of the flanges were bent, but they do not appear to be bent. Has anyone seen anything like this? What is the distance between the ears on a new halfshaft flange? Maybe my ears are bent inward slightly.

Bill

Mossy66

It's very common for those to get bent a little from pounding the old ones out. Measure what you have, then take it and bolt it back on the spindle and compare. Maybe you can get the u-joint started when you have it bolted up, and remove it to finish the job?

Gerry

DansYellow66

Bent flanges are fairly common - usually from pounding or pressing out u-joints (stating the obvious I guess). To be clear -when you say "too big" do you mean the caps are bigger than the flange bore diameter - or do you mean the u-join trunnion (spell?) length from end to end w/o caps prevents your being able to get it into the flange? Don't know the dimension but you should be able to measure from one C-clip grove to the other in the flange and compare that to the overall width of the u-joint with caps in place.

Bdeliman

I don't know the exact word, but with the caps removed, the u jouint does not fit into the flange. The part of the u joint with the cap removed hits the flange ear about 1/8 inch.

Bill

redred65cpe

I just measured the distance between the flange ears on my half shafts as best I could. I get about 2 5/8 inches. The distance lessens as you go closer to the plate end because the ears get wider. I don't know if the ears can move with the plate bending, but did you put a straight edge against the back of the plate? Although 1/8 inch is a lot to bend. I've only done drive shaft u joints, so I have no experience with this.

larry

Marks69BB

You may have the wrong size u-joints. Do you have the old ones to compare the new ones to?

Ironcross

the easiest way to get the old cross out is to blow it out with a flame wrench and never need to pound on the shaft distorting the flanges or yokes

JohnZ

Any time you're doing the outer U-joints on half-shafts, you should use either another flange, bolted back-to-back to the one you're working on, or a piece of plate stock drilled and tapped to bolt the flange to, to avoid distorting/bending the flange while pressing the U-joints. Bending the flange and/or the ears is VERY common when the proper support tool isn't used, and when the flange is bent, it's junk.

mrg

If I'm reading this right it sounds like the same problem I had when I installed the Spicer U-joints in my half shafts. The cross, or trunnion portion is pretty beefy compared to a standard size U-joint. In order to fit the the Spicer cross inside the mounting 'ears' of the half shaft I took a Dremel tool and slightly ground away a bit of inner ear material to allow clearance for the trunnion end to clear and enter the ear. It didn't take much - only a tiny slight amount of material was removed.