I've been having a slight vibration tinking it was nothing but a tire balance problem. I was wrong, it was the front driveshaft causing it. I was under the Jeep the other day greasing everything when I noticed the slip joint had some play in it. The splines were still tight if I tried to turn it, but when I pushed up on it the slop became apparent.
Driving home last night in the snow I decided to put it in fulltime 4WD, not good, the vibration was terrible! I pulled the DS this morning and drove it, and there was no vibration, so I took it to a driveshaft shop. They are going to cut the DS and replace the end, replace the splined yoke, and put a new u-joint in the pinion end. Nothing was wrong with ANY of the u-joints, but he said he would replace it anyway. The cardan joint was fine so I opted to save a few bucks and leave the u-joints in it alone.
Cost is $200 but I couldn't find any driveshafts locally. Besides it could just be as bad as the one I've got. FYI, if you have vibrations, and can't seem to find what's causing them look at your slip joint.
I got the front driveshaft back in this evening. So much for the vibration problem! One thing the shop did was to up the diameter of the splined shaft from 1 1/4" to 1 3/8". Much beefier, and more splines to spread the load across.
I'm considering having the front driveshaft I'm running with the H&T reworked to beef it up too.
What is the new spline count compaired to the old?
You know what? I didn't even ask. He just mentioned it to me when I picked up the driveshaft. Couldn't be too many more than stock, and I don't even know what stock is. If your really interested, I could stop by and ask him. The shop is on my way to work.