CV drive shaft question

I was at my local FleetPride shop today and their drive shaft guy was looking at my jeep and saw that the CV boot was stretched "further than normal" so While I was doing my U joint today I pulled the boot back to measure the spline engagement. It has 4.350 inches of splines engaged, it has 16 splines with an OD of 1.35. The splines look like they are made out of a blue plastic, or are coated in a plastic. Its a Rockford drive shaft, i'm not feeling any vibes and I have a SYE.

Does it sound like I have enough engaguement on the splines or should I start looking for a new drive shaft?


~Alex

That sounds odd.You should have taken a static length under weight,then the extended/collaped's lengths!

I scribed both sides of the splines with calipers then removed the shaft to replace a u joint. When it was out I took the shaft apart. I used the two scribed marks to get a measurement of how much of the splines were engaged.

~Alex

If its a std spline(not a custom like TW) your almost exactly half(most splines are 3").

I think I just answered my own question. The overall length of the spline is 6 inches and since I have over half of them engaged when the XJ is just sitting there I think I'm ok. It has about 4 inches of lift in the back with 31's. It had a SYE and this drive shaft in it when I bought it.

I just cleaned off the old grease and put some new high pressure stuff in there.
Here are some pictures of the drive shaft. You can see where my muffler was rubbing it, fixed the muffler with a 4 pound hammer. There is only a little bit of ware on the splines, most of it was probably due to a bad u joint in the back.





~Alex