I'm pretty sure I was observing the differential being a differential and for some reason was expecting it to behave differently - I wasn't thinking about the fact that I had the drive shafts removed. But I did notice that the shift fork and spring assembly weren't all entirely square, so I coaxed them back into shape and things are behaving much nicer now. I think though that the low range fork - the one that's cast and not a bent piece of steel (not sure why they did that) may have a slight bend in it as well that I didn't notice as going from 4Low to Neutral in the t-case leaves me stuck unless I really want to grind the gears or turn the car off (I chose the later), then I can put it into gear again (that included going back into 4Low).

I can live with that one - its just an inconvenience at the moment (more so off road I'm sure, but beats tearing it apart yet again... ATF isn't cheap!)

Now to track down why my driveline still has vibes in it even though the pinions are almost dead on (with in 0.2* at the rear, less in the front).. I'll save that for the appropriate thread though.

I don't think you can physically put the case together and have it spinning wrong, its chain driven, so it'll spin the same way, and I don't think there's any way it could go together backwards to get it to spin opposite directions mechanically.

If the 242 is in 4FT and you rotate the input with nothing connected to the outputs, the outputs will rotate in opposite directions due to the open center differential.

I was pretty sure it couldn't happen either... Granted I was doin this with my hand, but they were most definitely spinning in opposite directions - should have taken a video. I haven't been able to reproduce it and I'm not going to mount it up again till I've got things working again. It wasn't just 'kind of' spinning with, I couldn't spin one and stop the other with my hand. :Shrug:

I am actually pretty sure that cannot happen, because the front axle output is coupled to mainshaft, so it must rotate in the same direction.

I measured it at the junkyard and it was a direct fit after the yoke swap so...
Now that I look back on my thread from years ago it was 31 inches.

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'96 4.0 is 31.770" - closer, but not likely long enough for an early V8 - it would be pretty close to maxed out at ride height.







30.530" for a '93 4.0L. They are noticeably shorter than the early V8 shafts due to the 42RE being shorter than the 46RH. Shorter than the late 4.0L shafts due to the long-pinion D30, too.

Looks like he can get away with a 96 4.0 w/ 242 shaft at 33.00 inches. They are u-joint to u-joint and might be easier to find.

I used a front shaft from a 93 4.0 in my 5.9. Was around 34" if I remember. It was maybe 30 bucks from the pick and pull.

Looks like he can get away with a 96 4.0 w/ 242 shaft at 33.00 inches. They are u-joint to u-joint and might be easier to find.