Driveshaft Harmonic Balancer?

Hi Everyone,

Here's the new guy again with another question. I needed to change the tailshaft seal in my BW T5 and found the driveshaft has a large, heavy harmonic balancer incorporated into the front yoke. Do your cars have this? Do you think it would be ok to get rid of it and use a standard type yoke? I have a photo of the things but I don't know how to put it here for others to see.

Jeff

I have seen that type of thing before on really old farm trucks but never on one of these types of cars.

If it were me I would take it to a drive shaft company and ask them. Maybe have a new drive shaft made without one and see what the difference is.

The thing is that these cars have such a short drive shaft, it might actually help.

If there is someone close to you that has the same running gear as you but with a regular drive shaft might want to help out and do a drive shaft TEST swap to see what the difference is.

Ok, reading up on this it looks like they use this to get rid of harmonic vibrations. Mostly on vehicles that have long drive shafts though.

Thanks Terry. I have ordered a regular yoke and intend to take the driveshaft and new yoke to a driveline shop to talk to them about pro/ cons of switching it out. I'll let the forum know what I find out.

The driveshaft shop said the balancers are used primarily for long driveshafts to damp harmonics that can occur with them. They said it should not be necessary on our short driveshafts. So they installed the standard type yoke and rebalanced it. Turns out it was not balanced well before AND that balancer on mine had deformed causing it to wobble! This was likely causing the tailshaft seal leakage problem I had and creating a lot of vibration. I believe both to be true because now the leakage is gone and there is a noticeable change in the drivetrain "smoothness" driving down the road.

Great that you have it fixed. Thanks for the update.