Alright - so here's the story - I have a 1998 Rover SE 4.0 and I went to go have u-joints changed in my front prop shaft because of a vibration. Upon pulling the front shaft it was discovered that someone had replaced the shaft at some point and put one out of something else in the Rover. So we took just the rear flange from the drive shaft and bolted that back to the transfercase (because the transfercase side bolts for this thing do not remove without pulling the other side of the flange from the output shaft) and left the rest of the shaft out and I drove it home like that (only the rear shaft and the flange bolted on the front, no front shaft).

Now - it drove just fine. No noise, vibrations, nothing. Perfectly quite and smooth.

So - first question - and I don't think I did - but could it have damaged anything driving it home like this (less than 5 miles)? I don't think it did because there was no noise or weirdness or error lights or anything.

And second question ...
So I ordered a new front prop shaft, bolts/nuts, and the special sized socket tool all from Atlantic British and they should be arriving tomorrow. Has Anyone done this before? Know which size wrench(s) I need (I've got the tool coming for one side of the nut/bolt setup - I'm wondering about the other side). Also - I read on the Rave that you can lift one of the front tires and turn it to get the prop shaft to rotate - can anyone confirm? I went to remove the shaft myself and had the whole front end up on jackstands and couldn't get the drive shaft to rotate - hence why I took it to a shop so that all 4 tires could be off the ground, but now I know it's not supposed to be on a 2 post lift I figured I could bolt this back up myself.

Thoughts? Concerns? Ideas?

 

might work might not.

 

Just because it is not the oem shaft it does not mean that it was just a rebuilt shaft that worked just fine. Maybe I am not sure what you mean by the special tool for the nuts and bolts since mine is 97' but I just use a 9/16 closed end wrnech to get mine off. You should be able to rotate the shaft with a tire off the ground along with the transmission and TC in nuetral.

Let us know how it all works out.

 

So ... The studs on the transfer case side seem to be bent. Not HORRIBLY but to the point that I had difficulty getting the rear flange on them and the nuts I couldn't get the special thin walled socket on and had to use an open ended spanner - and even then - it BARELY fit and I couldn't get them as tight as I would've liked. To this end, I still have a slight vibration at speed and I think this is the cause. Any idea how to fix those other than heating them and trying to bend them back into place? It seems that 2 of them had already broken loose and were more like bolts - but the other two were snug in place - and seemed to be the ones that were warped. HELP?!