pulled rear drive shaft off accidently...

[Spitfi-r]

I'm new to the e30 world so thanks in advance for your help.

In the process of pulling out my diff, I somehow managed to pull my rear drive shaft off the splines up front. I was trying to balance the damn diff on the floor jack and didn't notice that the drive shaft and diff didn't come apart until it was too late.

Can I just push the rear drive shaft back onto the splines up front? How much force should it take.
Do I have to worry about the front/rear shaft being out of balance now? Are the two halves marked somewhere so that I can get them line up again correctly?

Any help is appreciated.

[KenC]

The halves are balanced separately. Just push it back together.

[dirtywhiteboy]

should be marked...

the yokes holding the u-joint need to match up, otherwise you will get bad vibrations... do a search, you'll find some info

[Spitfi-r]

Thanks for the replies.

Do I just need to line up the dots pictured below?


image taken from here

[jeffw]

Try to line them up but it's not super important.

[whodwho]

Oh but it is, you can/will get vibrations. Line up the dots and keep the ujoints on each half in-line.

[Spitfi-r]

The dots are lined up so I should be good to go.

It was a bit of a pain to have to remove all the heat shields and then to get the drive shaft lined up just right so that it would slide onto the splines.

[dkbmxer002]

like said line up the dots and drive it and see if it vibrates badly... my buddy got lucky on his and the previous owner or someone put a notch line on both drive shafts.