So a while back I needed an outer drive flange for my '95 VD FC and there were none in stock at Primus. The flange had "moved" leaving the bolts splayed and hard to get the CV joint back on. I had some whizzy ones made that had the benefit of incorporating the CV and eliminating those troublesome bolts. I wasn't trying to get real whizzy, I just wanted to eliminate extra parts and something else to checklist, get higher quality CV boots (the last couple of sets cracked pretty quickly) and eliminate the splayed bolt issue in trying to get the outer CV on. These use the FE style boot.
Unfortunately, they were made a bit more whizzy than I wanted, being shorter and tucking the CV up inside the upright more. I really just wanted a 1:1 replacement but that’s just a tale of woe.
To that end, the original CV/flange stacked height was 3.46" (88mm) and the new part is 2.37" (60mm). In addition, the old CV was 40mm (1.57”) with a depth from the edge to the snubber of ~48mm (1.9”) , and the new one is 30mm (1.2”) with a depth to the snubber of ~30mm (1.2”). That appears to be a mistake as you’ll see in the pics below.
The car originally used 18.75" axles. With a 1.09" difference in the parts stack, this means i should use an axle of 19.75 to 20" or so.
So I made a jig so that I could cut 3/4” aluminum tubing, place the jig ends and tripods on, and see where everything ended up.
With 20” axles (RF00) I couldn’t even get the upper a-arm back on. Inside snubber fully compressed.
With 19.75” axles (93/94 1600), I could almost get the a-arm back on, inside snubber still fully compressed.
The 19” axles (97/98/99) - not long enough - barely had the inside snubber compressed and the joints were hanging out of the housings a bit. Here are pics of the assembly at full droop, and at full compression.