[davepl]

Time for some schoolin'

First, yes, lockers are annoying on the street. But they're either locked or not, more or less, so don't cause

But as for U-Joints, it is completely irrelevant how it looks (within reason). It does not matter what the angle is. What matters is that the angle is the EXACT same angle as the other end.

Which is why, boys and girls, they invented the constant velocity joint for applications such as front wheel drive (and IRS) where you can't guarantee the output shaft is parallel to the input. But with a standard U-Joint, any difference in angles will show up as a vibration.

Think of it this way: as one u-joint cap goes around it's furthest outward point, it's speed is different than the innermost. So the whole deal speeds up. But when aligned properly, the exact opposite (kitty corner?) cap on the other end of the shaft is on its inside sweep, so it exactly compensates. If the angles are different, they do not cancel each other out and you wind up trying to constant accelerate and decelerate your rear axle (or trans, I suppose) with every driveshaft rotation and that's never good.

If you care about vibration, I wouldn't try to eyeball it. You really need to get a magnetic angle finder, which is probably available at the dollar store, though if you value accuracy you might want to spend double that.

On my leaf spring truck the axle has a 'nub' that fits into a receiver in the spring pack, so you really cannot change the pinion angle on the rear axle (haven't looked at a coil spring truck in a long time so can't recall). That leaves you with only the angle of the engine & trans to work with.

I will assume you've got the basics covered, like the right trans hump (TH400s like mine came with the tall hump) and crossmember and mount.

With all the right stock pieces it should, as you would imagine, be right on the mark or close enough to it. But once things start changing, the onus is on your to keep the angles right.

BTW, same deal for left-right (as viewed from above) but I've never run into that. Then again I'm the last guy left at stock ride height so I never have these kinds of issues :-)