5-178X U-Joint Kit 1350 Series (OSR)

Seems to be well made out of quality materials. I am very happy this u-joint is greasable, so you can keep it from prematurely wearing out with regular maintenance. It works as it should and is well built!

I'm making a driveshaft. I press the "weld yoke" into the tube, then weld. But before welding, I want to install the shaft to verify that I made it the right length. Checking that means the slip yoke and u-joint must be installed temporarily, then removed to weld. Installing and removing the u-joint involves some force, which might disturb the alignment and clocking of the weld yoke. Better if that can be done gently. So, I bought this to make a "setup" u-joint, which is just one with slightly small cap O.D. So, I just ordered the cheapest 1350 u-joint to do this. Disassembled, cleaned, belt sanded each cap while letting it spin a bit, until it just slides into the yoke. Worked great for this, but noticed a couple things that I would not like for normal use- the caps were about 0.0005" bigger O.D. than the new spicer joint I compared it to. A half a thousandth is significant for a tight 1.1875" fit...I think they would be noticeably harder to install. Also, after removing all needles and cleaning, I could see that the ground O.D.'s of the cross piece, which are what the needles run on, are pretty rough for a bearing surface. That might mean short life. The grease wasn't very impressive either, sort of like petroleum jelly, but, so what on that, I would grease after installing.

Overall appearance is similar to any other 1350 joint and it should be fine for stock replacement. With that being said, it's no Spicer/Dana joint and I wouldn't use it for a performance/racing application.