Had a squeaking while backing up coming from underneath the 72 cutlass which I suspected was a u-joint so I removed the drive shaft to check it out and was in fact both unjoints.they were stiff as heck and dry as a bone . Decided to give this one to the machine shop to handle ,since they were originals and I didn't feel like pounding the hell out of them . I'm curious as to how much power this was robbing from my drive train as lately the car won't spin the tires . Didn't make any noise in drive .any thoughts or similar experiences?

 

It might be surprisingly little.
The driveshaft is designed to run almost in a straight line under normal conditions, in fact the variation from straight isn't very much even when bottoming out a heavily laden car.
With the load on the joints when driving the car i'm sure they will move anyway.
Do make sure the new joints get attention from a grease gun at least once a year.

Roger.

 

thanks for the response .no chirping while backing up now ,and i did get the greaseable ujoints .my problem now is the grease gun tip wont fit in the narrow opening for the rear joint.ill have to look into options to remedy that

 

You can get a little adapter that is needle.

 

Thanks I didn't know there was one . I'll check it out

 

The other thing you can do is pull the drive shaft and wrap a cable tie around the 4 rear caps. Then just move the ujoints to a point where you can grease them. You can do this once every few years.

 

had no luck with the grease needle but thought id share this .adapted a rtv tip onto an old grease gun ,cut the tip to fit tightly over the fitting and was just small enough to fit in the tight space.worked well.