Driveshaft question

If you are looking at the chassis from the top should the driveshaft (2pc) be straight back to the pinion on the rearend. If I were to tape a piece of string to the tailshaft and connect it to the pinion on the rearend should the driveshaft follow that line? I know that from a side view it will not be straight back but angled to cancel out driveshaft angles.

The tranny is in the center of the frame and so is the driveshaft loop. You can see how the driveshaft goes to the right to meet the carrier bearing then comes back to the left where the rearend would be.

I have seen this on many different vehicles, the F-150 on my profile was set up like this, The thing is, the angles will usually cancel themselves out, so it isn't really an issue.

well the original motor was ofset to the passenger side and when I put in the small block I centered it.

a LOT of fords are set off center. hell, my tail shaft is to the passenger side of the vehicle, as is my motor, so the driveshaft meets the rear dead center of the truck.

There is almost always some offset on the driveline to keep the u-joints from vibrating. On fords, it's done by offsetting the pinion on the axle. Chevys have offset carrier bearings in most cases.
On Musclecar a few weeks back, they pointed out that factory Mopars had the whole engine and tranny moved to the pass. side to create the offset!
If you're building a frame from scratch, make sure you have some offset somewhere or you'll make noise at speed and wear out ujoints prematurely!

-Phil

That's a good point. I hadn't really thought about it like that.

I had noticed on my fullsize and others that I have looked at that the rear axle sits towards the passenger side more. I guess this could possibly be the reason.

I THINK that the reason for that is so that they only need to build one length axle. On a rearend with a centered pinion, the axles are different lengths.