SYE q...

has anyone run an sye with a regular shaft without changing pinion angle?

You're practically guaranteed to get vibrations if you install an SYE without tipping the pinion up.

A stock setup is a little goofy in that the center shaft actually has vibes, but the upper and lower u-joints cancel it out.

A shaft with a constant velocity type joint at the drive end keeps the center shaft runing at a constant speed. The driven end u-joint, if it's run with more than a few degrees of operating angle, will induce vibrations in the pinion yoke. You elimination the vibrations by reducing the operating angle at the single u-joint to as close to zero as (reasonably) possible.

See http://www.4xshaft.com/driveline101.html for a much more long-winded explanation.

running a SYE with a stock shaft will kill:
your Transfer case (with new SYE)
Your stock driveshaft
Your u-joints
Your rear end

read here for driveline geometry and slip joints, slip yokes, and the whole she-bang

I was just wondering. If you ran a standard type shaft with a slip in the middle wouldn't that be the same as stock setup just with the slip in a different place?

Guess you probably could do that. BUT...... you'll have to firmly fix the tcase end of the shaft in place. That'll require either swapping the output shaft for one with a fixed yoke (this is a heavy duty SYE) or a hack-n-tap style yoke. Any way you do it, and you're doing most of the work for an SYE, with a decidely non-standard setup.

Is there some particular reason you're trying to avoid changing the pinion angle?

Well yeah there is, I was going to use the HD sye. I wanted to get an sye in but I was planning on swapping axles and getting a taller lift, driveshaft etc but I can't do it all at once. I guess there's just something about leaving parts sitting around and not being able to do anything with them.

I was just curious but in the end I'll probably just wait to do it all at once.