The critical point is the rubber doughnuts can only cope with small misalignments. If you're confident your engine/box is mounted near perfectly straight with respect to your propshaft, then they are fine. Personally i wouldn't use them, with the manufacturing tolerances of the average robin hood.

Edited January 28, 201610 yr by Grim

If you had one come apart like I did you would understand my dislike of them 70 mph, big tears in floor pan and swmbo doing her nut ok it was on a type 9 box [late Cortina ] but also had a couple of similar joints break up on a formula ford I used to spanner [ used as drive shaft joints out of a VW/Hewland box chassis repairs needed and the driver needed an under wear change .The steel band is to enable easier fitting and should be cut off once fitted , lots of drama with those things not easily forgotten mick

if you look at my video you will see that with the later set up the prop cannot come free and so cannot come through the tunnel or anywhere else!!

 

yes they have to be pretty much inline or they will degrade quicker but they are used on thousands and thousands of cars with no problems at all.

 

a friend of mine had the front prop UJ on a Toyota pickup come apart at the transfer box he managed to get back to the garage and we had to cut his ankle out of the foot well he still walks with a limp!!!!

so I would certainly say that uj's are more likely to cause injury that's why people fit retainer plates in their tunnels!

 

like these.

Mine failed in less than 8 miles. 2 U/Js are better than 1 U/J and 1 of these

was it more than one or two degree out of line? if so that's the reason, Was it new or did it come off a 20 year old sierra?

like I've already said if used correctly they are safe and perfectly suitable for their purpose.

surly ford, bmw, Landrover, vauxhall Opel, etc.. etc. etc. cant all be wrong!!

the best joint to use in our set up would probably be a cv joint though.

in my 2B the prop runs at less than 1 degree.

my old Dutton that I had over 20 years ago had one and I was running a fiat 1600 124 sport motor with twin 45's had it for 5 years never had a problem, and I drove it like a lunatic.