Upward driveshaft angle?

[Coloradocobra]

For Midstates as well as a few others, the transmission and pinion angles are essentially opposite conventional wisdom. If you set up the pinion to be parallel to the transmission, the total angle at the u-joints will be too large creating vibration and potential failure.

The goal is to get the two centerlines to intersect at the center of the driveshaft - which requires that the pinion points DOWN at the front. It seem weird, but it works and every Midstates with a solid rear that I have seen uses this to success. The problem with this configuration is that is is very sensitive to rear position and you must set it up with weight in the car equalling a passenger, a driver, and some cargo. You may also want to set the pinion down a degree or two from "ideal" to allow for some wrap-up during acceleration.

If you don't believe me, contact Bob at Midstates to confirm this. On several of the web sites on driveshafts, they illustrate this setup although they concentrate on the parallel configuration. I set mine up parallel for the first drive and it shook so bad that I thought I had real problems. I went to the "nose down" and have not had to adjust it since.

Oh, one of the "Oh yeah, we do that all the time" things I learned after messing around with mine is that Midstates often places spacers above the transmission crossmember plates to raise the transmission up to get a better angle. I have 428/toploader and ended up with 3/4" spacers to improve the angles.

Good luck,

Gary