do you have it? can you take a coupe of pics and post them on here?

 

the cv joint on my oem one had a rubber boot around it that tore and dust and dirt got in there, and they start to make a terrible noise when engaged.

 

I've found that the easiest and cheapest approach is to get a drive shaft with all the pieces that I needed and a longer tube, then get the tube re-sized & balanced by a local driveline shop. I would think that a RAM drive shaft would work, or get a rear shaft and get that shortened. Here are some points to keep in mind when doing this:

• Auto salvage yard is often the cheapest place to get the initial shaft.
• Shortening (resizing) a shaft and balancing is cheaper than re-tubing and balancing.
• The U-joint yokes and slip-joint on this shaft need to be in good shape & the yokes should be for the same u-joint size as the yoke on your differential. If it's different & you want to use the shaft, you can get a u-joint that'll fit 2 different yoke sizes.
• Buying something heavy that's not local will often have some healthy shipping costs associated.

 

Hmm I know that when and if mine fails, I will be going to a local shop and having them replace that stupid CV joint with a u-joint and or make a complete new drive shaft.

 

Mine did the exact same thing, except the cv joint blew out before I could get to it, resulting in a cracked t case. I just took it to the local transmission shop and they replaced everything. As for the drive shaft just google it. Ive found plenty in my search of new things to add to the truck.

 

Mine did that same thing, looked almost identical to those photos. I am not sure if it was on this forum that I found it before I joined, but I read a lot of warnings about changing the rear to a U-Joint. This front shaft turns full time thus why they use a Constant Velocity Joint (CV Joint) at the rear.

 

That CV can be changed to a standard single cardan joint just like you have on the other end. If you get another shaft from a junkyard that has a good standard U-joint (single cardan) on it, you can remove that whole joint assembly (what you're after on the shaft side is the same size plug that goes into the tube so you can remove one and slide the other in for welding). What I'm uncertain about is whether you can use the 4 bolt flange or whether you need to re-use the original flange from the CV joint - I've seen this approach on other Dakota/Durango sites and it appears to work well. You should be able to get a good idea on which way to go by talking to any good driveline shop and from what I've read, it's quite a bit cheaper than getting a new drive shaft with the volatile CV joint. If you want to do this mod yourself, keep in mind that you need to line up the second U-joint correctly before welding and balancing - there are lots of sites that will tell you the joints need to be in relation to each other.

If you have a lift of some variety that has caused the angles at the transfer case and/or the differential to change or become unequal, the better option would be to use 2 double cardan joints (1 at each end of the drive shaft) with the appropriate flanges. The 2 double cardan joints make each end independent of the angles at the other end and they're a lot more dependable than that CV joint.

Here are some pictures of drive shafts I had made by using the double cardan joints from the front drive shaft of the Jeep XJ (I think these start around the late 90's - the TJ had a similar joint).

This picture shows the front Jeep YJ (my toy) drive shaft with the added Spicer double cardan joint attached to my transfer case.

FinalCableShift-4.jpg

This one is a top view.

Clutch-04.jpg

This is a pic of the modified front and rear shafts before installation - the cables are for shifting my transfer case.

DriveShafts-01.jpg