This morning I went to a "Pick-N-Pull" salvage yard and grabbed the drive shaft out of a mid-90's Mustang with a T5. I only needed the slip yoke (the very front piece of the shaft--the piece that slides into the back of the transmission) but had to buy the whole thing. And, since it was a "Pick-N-Pull," I had to remove it myself--so a few minutes underneath a car sitting on a stack of old wheels on crushed gravel struggling with rusty nuts and bolts and I was rewarded with a 5-foot long metal tube. After a quick trip back to the garage to make sure the yoke fit (it did,) I got things measured up.
The drive shaft on this Studebaker is a two-piece affair. There's a bearing in the center, with a surrounding metal framework that is bolted to a cross member of the frame. This cross member has a hole in the middle through which the drive shaft passes. Since the new transmission is longer than my old one I need to shorten the drive shaft, but since the distance from the cross member to the differential at the rear of the car is the same as before, I only need to get the front section shortened. To do this, I removed the yoke from the Mustang drive shaft and pushed it all the way into the back of the transmission. I then pulled it out 1" to allow for a bit of movement. Then, measuring from the center line of where a u-joint will connect the slip yoke to the drive shaft to the back of the cross member, I determined that the front drive shaft will need to be 6.5-inches long.
It was off to Salem to the closest drive line shop to have the front shaft shortened, and, while they're in there, to go ahead and replace all the u-joints and the center bearing. Should be just like new when they're done.
On the way back, I stopped by the radiator repair shop to check on the gas tank and the heater core. The "core" of the heater core, which needed to be replaced, was shipped today and should arrive on Monday--so that should get finished by mid-week, and the gas tank will be done soon after.
Won't be long until the car will move under its own power now.
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