[A Snake]

It is vitally important that that the u-joint angles match exactly on both ends of the driveline.

To illustrate, picture a letter Z lying down. It doesn't matter which is higher, the rear end or the engine as long as the angles match. So...if the engine is angled down 5 degrees, angle the pinion up 5 degrees. It doesn't matter if the driveline goes "uphill" to the rear end at all, as long as there's room under the car's floor pan or tunnel for it.

It is equally important that if there is an offset in the differential to one side of engine centerline, that these angles be equal also. It is hoped that this would be accounted for in the selection of rear axel asseblies. It is simple to determine. Simply measure from each axle face to center of pinion shaft, using a straightedge. The straight edge needs to be long enough to lie on the axle face and protrude past the backing plate. This allows a straight line for the tape measure. Unless you have really long arms, it takes two people.

If you don't match all of the angles exactly, you will have serious vibration and premature u-joint failure.

Use a protractor with an accurate spirit level. Since your engine is apparently already mounted, use the u-joint flange on the trans for reference measurement and duplicate by again using the protractor/level(already set) on the pinion flange. If you already have leaf spring perches welded on the housing, you will most likely need spring wedges to get the angle right. If you are using coil over and watts linkage, I can only hope you don't already have the mounts welded on. That needs to be done after the pinion angle is properly set.

Hope this helps.


Al