^ Might take you up on that jay bob. How's your weather just now? Wet and windy here.

Update.

Now for the most enjoyable part of the whole thing. For me anyway.

The Driveshaft: or Propshaft as it’s known in the UK.

Since the engine was a good 1” out of alignment with the diff (higher than original) and that situation could not be tolerated by a standard Merc shaft I opted for a one piece unit with Hardy-Spicer UJ’s instead of the rubber Guibos. A local shaft company came to the house and measured up and advised that because of the length between flanges 6bolt heavy duty UJ’s and 3” dia tube would be required. Also, I would have to make some sort of adaptors to convert the three bolt Merc flanges to accept the 6bolt Spicers. Enter knight in shining armour in shape of pal who does CAD work on industrial gearboxes and axles.

Note: front and rear are different sizes…the Getrag box is 100mm PCD and the 126 diff flange is 110mm PCD. The scalloped out shape and extra holes are just to add lightness.




The co-ordinates for these were sent across to my Brother-in-Law who has a machine shop business and they were produced out on a CAD-CAM mill. Note the 2mm x 18mm dowels which engage and bottom out in registers in the flanges and transmit all the drive force rather than the bolts. Just as they do in the Guibo's





My nephew who did most of the machining sent me this clip…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCP62uc_Cmc

Another problem was the speedo drive. On the 280 autobox this is electric. The Getrag has a cable. Solution was to make a pick-up plate with the same number of trigger teeth as the autobox and clamp it between the adaptor and gearbox flange then arrange for the original 280 pick-up to ‘see’ these teeth. The jig I made clamps to the Getrag box in the hole where the cable should go and is adjustable by shimming should the clearance need to be varied. A test done by mounting the rotor in the lathe and moving the pick-up out and in in relation to the teeth found that a distance of between 1mm – 2mm worked best. Any more than that and the pick-up failed to register until increasing revs were applied.



Trial fitting of the front adaptor and pick-up.


When the shaft got delivered the tube had been packed with corrugated paper. This dampens out any harmonics apparently. Amazing the things you learn.

Bolted up in position and finished.




Jumping ahead in time and having now driven the car for a few months all the warnings that came my way about how it would be harsh and vibrate were completely groundless. It’s just a smooth and vibration free as any OEM Merc shaft. There’s no judder on take-up of drive and I’ve waved goodbye forever to the unreliable Guibo’s.




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