Well, i took some measurements.
Five of my yokes in the front axle don’t have a u joint installed, and pretty much measured 41.35mm between the ears at the inner most spots close to the shaft, AND at the outermost spot at the tips of the ears. There is a little leeway, but only say 0.1 mm this way or that. Not inches, millimeters. It’s quite difficult to hold calipers up and get readings smaller than that by the human eye so the 0.1mm is very likely human error.
So unless all five of those yokes happen to be bent exactly the same distance in only one direction so that the ears retained quite good relationship, i don’t suspect my yokes are very much bent at all.
I also measured the u joints themselves. These are the Moog 436. I measured one that’s installed in the sixth yoke and feels nice, that’s with the 1.5mm THIN old clips, not the 2mm new clips, and the joint totals at about 37.85mm between the clips. That plus 3mm total from two thin 1.5mm clips equals 40.85, which is exactly 0.5mm shy of the width between the ears of all six of my yokes. This seems pretty functional to me but I’m not experienced in this. Like i said there is some error too.
If i wanted to use 2mm clips within my yoke ears, I’d need the u joint to compress to 37.35mm exactly since my ears all sit 41.35mm apart. And that’s with zero tolerance. I’m not surprised by zero tolerance, since we want a total press fit here. So I then to test this I simply held a joint by hand and squeezed until it was 37.35mm, then I tested movement. And guess what, it’s really stiff. I’m starting to understand from all of this that the u joint interior shafts are pressing heard against the cap interior, causing a lot of resistance. And when I loosen the squeeze so that the joint now expands to be 37.85mm, the joint moves freely.
So i looked up the Moog 436 specs… On rock auto, the axis is spec’d at 37.617 MM. This is almost dead center between 37.35 and 37.75, Ahhhhhhh. Hahah. But that does mean that it’s not supposed to be crunched down to 37.35mm. And if i use thinner clips that sets my 436 to be 37.85 instead of 37.617, that’s around 0.1mm on either side of the axis that can have a bit of play. But there is rubber involved still compressing the joint inward, so it seems like this isn’t the end of the world.
So I’m leaning heavily in the direction of sanding down my clips to be 1.5mm. If my yokes were all measuring varying widths between the ears, and especially if they were each measuring a different width from the base of ears to the edge of ears revealing some bends, then I’d start hammering away to open up my yokes.
But it seems that if my ears look pretty darn straight, i am just ASKING for trouble by starting to hammer/bend these things. I’d likely be messing up the alignment / axis of the holes for the caps which would then sit at a slight angle and trash the u joint fitment/operation.
If there was a good way to measure the ears from a center line, I’d go right ahead and do that and hammer tiny adjustments this way or that. But as things are it seems best to roll with what is the least risky.
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