I have just recently rebuilt the tailshaft in my VL as the unis were flogged out (I actually rebuilt a spare tailshaft) and I did find the CV joint was flogged out too,so I cleaned & repacked a spare CV joint from an auto tailshaft with molybond grease and I fitted regreaseable unis,everything was marked and I have never had any problems with propeller shaft vibration like I have now in other Commodore tailshafts I rebuilt.
There was some degree of vibration evident before but I expected that from a tailshaft with flogged out unis,etc,the outer rubber cushion was also softer on the old centre bearing but it was perished as well, but I believe it was taking up on a lot of the vibration whereas now the rubber mount on the new centre bearing is hard.
What I noticed is I can move the slip yoke inside the gearbox sideways and there is play evident,the sort of play you get when the unis are flogged out but it isn't leaking any oil.
I know under my brothers VN which has a Supra 5 speed and it has no slop in it whatsoever whereas in the VL I can feel it,I can also hear the slip yoke dust slinger hit on the shroud on the end of the extension housing ,the vibration is evident the most at 60 KPH and a bit at 80 KPH also on deceleration but at 100 - 120 KPH it seems to disappear or on heavy acceleration it isn't as noticeable.
People mention balance weights but we had the front half of the VN's tailshaft modified by Rod Hadfield (it is actually off a HSV V8 Commodore with the V6 uni journals welded to it),has a bigger diameter tube witb no balancing and the rear half is still for a standard V6 auto wagon and there's no vibration so I have something seriously wrong with my car.
I can only put it down to the slip yoke wobbling around inside of the bush in the extension housing,Holden says the bush which only comes with the extension housing is no longer available and I was wondering if any of you have has to contend with this before,if any of you do rebuild transmissions professionally.
I have a spare transmission which is the same and the 3rd/4th synchro needs replacing and was wondering what you guys who have rebuilt these boxes do,can a machine shop fix it?,or is it just the case of sorting through a whole lot of parts ,picking the best parts and building the box out of that.
I was thinking of the approach of fitting an RB20DET box to it with low kms if nothing can be done about it.
the yoke should be a neat fit on the spline of the output shaft , so maybe the spline has flogged out a bit. as for the vibration, the spare tailshaft you used, what was it out of, all VL shafts are in phase except the VLT manual tailshaft which is 90deg out of phase. Also a driveshaft DOES need to be balanced, could be as simple as that to fix it up.
Cheers
The phasing of an N/A VL tailshaft I think is the same as a VN tailshaft,when we had to get my brothers modified for the Supra conversion Rod Hadfield used a totally different front tube as I may have mentioned on front section.
The phasing for that from memory was something like 15 degrees out of phase from the rear section,both the VN 3.8 litre auto and VS 5.7 litre 6 speed tailshaft he modified by welding the VN uni eyelets onto the VS front tube which he cut to size (100mm longer than the VN auto tailshaft),Rod had to phase the tube and we have had no vibration troubles with this shaft and it hasn't even been balanced.
What I did last night is pulled the tailshaft out and found the front uni was binding a smidgen,so I gave both eyelets a sharp rap to free them up (obviously at least 2 of the caps were pressed in slightly too far,put it back in and the vibration was still there to a slightly lesser extent,pulled the shaft back out and rotated it around 180 degrees as I figured the balance weights were not in their correct position,this reduced the vibration a little further and made it far less annoying.
I drove the car a bit today and for some reason when I was coming home (13 km drive from town) the vibration seemed to be almost non existant,I don't know if something had to seat in or what but I won't know till I drive the car again,what I did notice when it was vibrating is the speedo needle would bounce more at 60 KPH than at any other speed, (it still does it a bit at 60 KPH ).
I am still concerned about the rear bush in the gearbox as there is a fair bit of slop there which my brothers Supra box doesn't have,no one I know can sell me a bush,wear in this bush according to the Gregoy's manual is a cause of tailshaft vibration,as I may have mentioned too I have a spare 5 speed I want to do up if economical to repair but I need to find someone who will sell a bush,either that or I will have to get a machine shop to machine & fit one.
May be time for an RB20 box as I also know the front bearing in the one I am using ATM is crook,also the tailshaft I did up was a VL non turbo manual tailshaft.
