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I recently had my stock Dana 60 semi float regeared from 373 to 410 gears. After the regear, an oscillating vibration started occurring around 70 mph. I told the shop that did the gegear and they told me this was likely due to driveshaft imbalance, and the vibration wasn’t noticed before because the driveshaft was not spinning as quickly as it is now with the new gears.
I took the van into a drive shaft shop to have the shaft balanced and u-joints replaced, and they told me that the shaft is an inch to an inch and a half too short. They were convinced that this is the issue, and didn’t re-balance the shaft. They offered to extend the driveshaft at the cost of $950. I declined to have it extended, and just picked the van up and took it home to do some more research
This is what I assume to be the factory drive shaft that came in the van when I bought it, I’ve had this vehicle for going on six years and I’ve never had an issue with a vibration at any speed like this before. I’ve looked at a few other vans with similar drivetrain and all of the driveshaft lengths/insertion distances seem to be about the same (2.5” from flange to tail housing).
I’m taking the van back to them next Monday to have the shaft balanced, and u-joints replaced. I spent some time on the phone with them while I was scheduling the appointment going through my research and discoveries in regards to other vans with similar drive lines, they claim that they see driveshaft that are too short from the factory often enough that they don’t suspect anything odd about it.
Curious to see if anyone on here has had similar experiences or had any thoughts about the issue. Here’s a picture of the driveshaft where it enters the transmission as it sits right now. This is with the van on the ground. I should also add that I had the transmission rebuilt about two summers ago, and it looks like they may have used a shorter dust boot on the tail housing than what was originally there from the factory.
I think the shaft is too short. I would unbolt the back of the shaft and see if it will slide in as far as others are thinking. If it can't then that is probably how it left the factory.
Not certain if there are date codes marked somewhere, but it would not hurt to check. All the date codes should be close together of the build date. If the shaft date is newer than the build date, you know something is up.
The other odd thing I see is that there seems to be oil splatter stains at the base of the driveshaft. If those are indeed old oil stains, how did oil get back there? Seems like the only way would be if the shaft was slide further in the transmission housing.
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