My son brought his car (1973, unknown mileage, unknown driveline
maintenance) home from school over the weekend and mentioned a vibration.
Sure enough, between 2,500 and 3,000 RPMs in both third and fourth gear, the
car starts to vibrate. Believing it might be universal joints, we jacked it
up and checked the driveline. The universals felt "OK" with no real slop
that you could feel in them. The differential had about the same amount of
"looseness" as the other times we had checked. We found that the universal
joints attaching the rear axles to the differential were loose enough to
visually see the two adjoining metal plates turn independently (sounds bad,
but you could just barely see that they were loose). We tightened all eight
bolts. The vibration is pretty much the same. Thought we would have the
wheel balance checked first, but I believe the vibration is drive line
related.
What do we need to look at next? What do we rebuild/replace first.
Thanks in advance,
Jim Farris
Montgomery AL
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