Sadly, I get a bit impatient on this task and make a couple of dorky mistakes.
First up is detaching the rear end of the driveshaft.
Sadly, during this process, I find that the car seems to have ended up in gear somehow. It certainly wasn't when it was last pushed into the garage in early 2010 - perhaps when removing the shift column, it was put into gear then. What this means is the driveshaft won't spin freely, and to get all these nuts free (and the nuts on the front end as well), I need to recruit a helpful soul nearby to wander over and depress the clutch pedal while I spin the driveshaft by hand.
One of the things the service manual stresses is making marks on some of these parts, to keep track of how they went together, for balancing purposes. Taking a lead from Thomas, a Swedish ponton owner who sent me links to a bunch of photos he took when removing his driveshaft, I hit the rear piece and the splined area it slides onto with some paint. Sadly, this paint doesn't last in the end, and I may have some balancing issues once the car is back together that need resolving. Mistake #1.
Next up is removing the bolts holding the front end of the driveshaft to the transmission. In this case, it's only three bolts, not six.
And then it's time to disconnect the center bearing bracket from the bottom side of the tunnel area. Three bolts hold this in place, with some protective plates in the mix.
Once the center bracket is loose, I take Thomas' advice and use a flathead screwdriver to spin that bracket around a bit inside the tunnel, which should make getting it out easier.
This is where I realize I've made Mistake #2 - as I had not yet removed the rear-most piece of the driveshaft off the spline. With the whole driveshaft loose, it's a more difficult job to wrestle this piece free from the end of the splined area, and to get it around the flange on the rear axle. But, that's a minor issue, and soon I'm working on getting the whole shaft assembly out. Service manual says to put the splined end into the lower left corner of the tunnel and pull it out that way. This is a bit of a task, wrestling the whole assembly into a position that puts the rear shaft at the proper angle so that it clears the rear axle enough that it can be slid out.
But then, trouble! The car is only so far off the ground on jackstands - and not far enough to allow the driveshaft to clear, without the rear end of the shaft touching the garage floor! Not to worry - the solution is simply to get the floor jack into position and jack the rear end up a few extra inches, and then reach under the rear end of the car (I'm not getting under there!) and pulling on the driveshaft until it comes out of the tunnel enough that the car can be lowered back onto the jackstands. Now I can roll back underneath and guide the driveshaft the rest of the way out.
And out it comes!
The center bearing bracket was rattling loose as I pulled the driveshaft out, and the rubber that fits around the main center bearing, within the bracket, looks pretty rough. Fortunately these rubber pieces are available from a number of sources and aren't terribly expensive. The bearing itself seems to spin alright, so I expect it'll be refurbishable.
Front end of driveshaft with centering flange.
Now to disconnect the front and rear driveshaft parts. This is where Mistake #3 occurs - I did not properly mark the position of the two pieces relative to each other before taking them apart! But I think I'll be ok on this front, due to the photo above of the whole shaft assembly - as there are small rectangular plates welded onto each shaft piece in various places. I assume these are for balancing, much like the small weights attached to wheel rims. I can use that photo, and the position of those small plates, to connect the two shaft pieces together again in the right way. Phew.
In this area, we have locking plates! There are three of them, one for each pair of bolts/nuts, and the ends of each plate are bent up to rest flush against a flat side of each nut. I have to take a small flathead screwdriver and tap it in sideways on each end of the plate with a hammer - once it's wedged in enough, I can shift 90 degrees and tap the ends of the plates down with the flathead from above the nuts, enough that the nuts can be removed.
Driveshaft pieces detached, with locking plates and nuts scattered. Everything goes into a baggie! The next task will be disassembling the universal joints and doing general cleanup. That can wait until the body is off for some TLC.
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