We are making a locost with a slightly changed chassis. We bought from Martin Keenan his rear top and bottom wishbones and uprights. We measured the pitch between the top wishbone brackets (584 mm, 23”) and bottom wishbone brackets (508 mm (20”) from an indy chassis. We are now trying to put everything together. It seems that either the driveshafts are too long and therefore need shortening or that the measured pitch between the brackets is too short. Can someone please confirm the fact that either the driveshafts need to be shortened or that the measured pitch is too short, because it seems that the driveshafts need to be pushed in too far. Our distance between the outside faces of the uprights (when both are precisely vertical) is 1364 mm (53 11/16”). We think they should be a few mm further apart. Can someone please confirm this. we use the standard Sierra diff and driveshafts.
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My Indy was just like this. There is loads of 'spring' in the CV joints so when you tighten the bolts up, the shaft just gets a bit shorter. This allows it to elongate when the suspension moves up or down.

Cheers,
Matt.

P.S. Don't forget one shaft is longer than the other!!

As said driveshafts are not shortened. I'm sure you know, but one is longer than the other.

just out of interest I am sure it will be obvious when I go to fit them but which side does the shorter shaft go??

Rich.

On the left.

Adam

left as you look at the front of the car??

Shortie, if you look at my pic, the diff is offset to the passengers side, so the short shaft will go on the left looking at the rear and the longer one on the right


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looks pretty obvious, just never looked that closely at the diff.

thanks,
Rich.

Thanks Matt_Claydon.

When you say that the shafts just get a little smaller by pushing the springs inside the shafts in, do you do that for roughly a little over an inch? Because that was the fact in our situation. Therefore we would like to have some information about the dimensions we mentioned in our first message. We worry about the measured dimensions, since it is now clear that the driveshafts don't get shortened.

P.S. Indeed, we did not miss the fact the left driveshaft is shorter than the right one.

If I remember correctly it was about an inch - I thought it was a lot at the time but have had no problems. You would probably find it was the same on the sierra donor if you could go back in time and check!!

Oskins,

I've done my own IRS so it scared the sh1t out of me when I thought they were too long!
Just push them in and forget about it!

HTH,

James