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Originally posted by Ken300D
a low speed vibration/groan was caused by the center support bearing and not the U-Joint.
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....develop a "center-detent" wear point...I would not advise expensive driveshaft work just to replace a U-joint that has this kind of minor wear.
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Good points and, good catch on finding that driveshaft shop in Portland. Austin is a black hole when it comes to machinery or any real-world fabrication capability. However, if you are here in town, and need a quartz focus ring for a 300mm wafer etcher, you can probably get fixed-up pretty quickly. Bah.
My experience is that the center support failure/wear manifests isself in one or both of two modes. 1) a hissing, bad bearing noise when the bearing fails and 2) a fairly dramatic vibration under low speed acceleration when the surrounding rubber support is failing. This particular vibration, I believe, is caused by the shaft actually orbiting at the center support rather than spinning.
Replacing Marlene's center support cured the low-speed vibration but did nothing for the harmonic buzzing in the 57-60 and 65-78mph ranges.
Since I know her u-joint has 'detent' wear, and I can also feel a miniscule amount of play at the center point, the orbiting was probably the final manifestation of a u-joint failure, brought on when the vibration of the driveshaft (because of the u-joints) eventually destroyed the rubber in the center support to the point that it's vibration isolation qualities are nil.
I'm convinced that my buzzing won't be fixed until I do something about that u-joint.