I've been chasing a vibration in the front end for the last few weeks. I started with the easy things: balanced and rotated the wheels, replaced the panhard rod bushings, and no luck nor change. Today I jacked up the axle to feel for slop in the wheel bearings. None. So I removed the front driveshaft and drove it around. Sure enough, the vibration is completely gone. The driveshaft is only about 1000 miles old though, and it's a Tom Woods drive shaft from Lucky8. Is it possible it's dead after only that many miles?

 

I had similar experience with an after market greasable drive shaft that was pretty expensive at the time, it was made by a shop at Milwaukee , looked very beefey and heavy duty, the minute I installed it disco started vibrating over 40 mph & at 65 it was really bad, the only reason I bought it was thinking my original might fail, because of all horror stories I had read, I greased my original driveshaft bearings and ball joint and put it back, it was as smooth as it can be, that was in 2016 and still running smooth with 170k miles on it,,
later on I bought the cheaper greasable one from Lucky8 for another Disco I have, that one was ok, but I still think it’s not as smooth as original, so I kept the original greased all points and still have it, I might put it back on some day, but the lucky8 cheaper has been ok for past 8k miles,,,
I still think nothing is as smooth as original driveshaft if it’s in good condition,

 

I talked to L8 today and they assert that before a TW drive shaft goes bad, to check the front transfer case output bearing. Worth a look. I'd agree that's more likely. The TC (and the rest of the Disco) only has 82K on the clock though, but we'll see. Going to check that first.

 

Was your old driveshaft bad? If not grease it up and put back on just to see if vibration goes away,
It also could be that TW was off balance just a bit and damaged your transfer case bearing with the 1000 miles you had it on, rarely that bearing goes bad in80k miles unless truck was abused off roading or had no gear oil in it for long time .

 

Ugh, I should've held onto the old drive shaft, but alas, I tossed it. Definitely didn't think I'd need it.

 

Wanna know something super weird.

I just installed a Tom Woods driveshaft, as preventative maintenance (my stocker driveshaft was fine but had 102K miles on it), and I had a vibration from 40-45. I had no vibrations prior.

I emailed back/forth with them, they were VERY helpful. In my case I reinstalled the previous driveshaft and ... the vibration was still there. Super weird. I thought.

I then went after the rotoflex. I eventually ended up replacing my rear driveshaft, rear driveshaft centering bushing, and rotoflex and guess what... vibration is gone now. I think it may have been rotoflex. BTW I replaced rear driveshaft because when I was drilling/chiseling/man-hammering out the #$&@#@ centering bushing, I drilled a hole into the driveshaft.

It made no sense to me but a similar experience.

 

I have heard many times over the last 8 years about Tom woods bad out of the box Myself included once I hit 60 Kilometres a hour it was a bad vibration

 

That’s nuts! Thankfully I can rule out the rear driveshaft since the vibration goes away without any front driveshaft installed.