[LONGHAIR]

Well, from the looks of it, gcburdic, yours is off (out of phase) but that appears to be in the welded section. I suppose that since it is the section that is held by the carrier bearing, it "theoretically" doesn't have an "opposing" joint on the other end. The important part of the phasing would be between the middle and rear joint. Those two would need to be aligned.

The joints are supposed to be "in-line". Say you lay your drive shaft on the garage floor, standing on the "flat" of the yoke. Then all of the joints should stand the same way. Now, I know that your carrier bearing is in the way of this, but you get the point? When they are aligned like this, each joint is doing the same thing, meaning compensating for the angle of the drive shaft, at the same time.

Many times there is a "dead" spline that will only let it slip together one-way...but not always. All of the others I have seen have had an odd number of splines. This makes it so that there is really no way for it to be assembled 180 degrees out of rotation. Even if this wouldn't effect the phasing, it could effect the balance of the shaft as a whole.