Drive shaft parts, seat heaters

[Mike Arman]

> From: "John Cody Forbes" <cody at 5000tq.com>
> Subject: Driveshaft question and seat heater prices

> 
> Ok so I have a rebuilt driveshaft here that I've been planning on installing on my 5ktq
ever since I picked it up from Mike Armans used Audi parts store (thats 
a joke - lets just
say he had a TON of stuff that I hauled away). I dug it out last night 
and found all of the
bits and pieces that I'd need, except one has turned up missing. The 
shaft was stored in
halves with the center U joint in a box along with the CV bolts and 
such. Somehow sometime
the u joint yoke on the driveshaft half with the center bearing ran 
away. It just slides on
to a spline, and I immagine it's held with a circlip.
> 
> My question is about if that yoke is ballanced with the shaft. My only idea is to use the
yoke from the driveshaft currently in my car, but I'm worried about 
throwing the ballance
off. Along those same lines I'm curious if the shaft is ballanced half 
at a time, or
completely assembled. There is no key spline, so the yoke can be 
installed in quite a few
degrees of wrong if there is such a thing.
> 
> 
> Mike, do you remember if that yoke was with the shaft before, or maybe if it was in one of
the other boxes?
> 
> 
> As for my non-working seat heaters, well I checked and found both bottom elements bad today
in the front seats, though the back elements are ok. List price for new 
elements? $176 from the
local dealer, $141 my cost. I can't spend that kind of money, so I've 
been thinking about
possible repair methods, but for all the work of taking the seat apart I 
really don't want to
be back to square 1 again next fall. Dunno what I'm guna do quite yet.
> 
> 
> -Cody Forbes


It was actually closer to three tons . . .


Cody - go back and look in the stash again - there's a complete drive 
shaft, assembled already, balanced and correctly indexed. I bought it 
from Chris Semple. The parts you are looking at came with the dark grey 
car and were never an assembled, complete drive shaft. All the parts 
were there, however, so what you're missing is just misplaced. (In other 
words, keep digging, but you really want to use the assembled shaft 
instead.)

The shaft is balanced as an assembly, not in halves.

On the seat heaters, I understand you can open the seats carefully and 
splice the heater wires. They won't solder so you need to make some sort 
of mechanical connection. The mouse-fur seat set (light blue, originally 
from the 5K-q-t) had working seat heaters, and I *think* the heaters in 
the leather seats I put in that car were working, too.

Let me know what you find!

Best,

Mike

Off in V8Q land . . .