3800 cv joints on a 3400 possible?

[DarksideGA]

While I was changing the brakes on my buddys 00 GP I noticed that the cv drive axle is a little beefier than the ones on the 3400 grand am's. So I was wondering if anyone has the means to find out if they will work, because soon i will be in need of something that can handle more power.

[sil]

i heard they are slighty shorter? becuase the 3800 sits lower?
have no clue though, i could possibly be regurgitating bs :P

[sharkey]

your 4t45e axle will not interchange with anything else, its a small spline. the 4t65e uses a fairly large diameter shaft and it wont fit the 4t45e trans. a 4t65e hd uses even bigger axles. there also is the issue with the gp being a bunch wider than the grand am.

[Joseph Upson]

You may not be completely out of luck with what you are trying to do. The bottom line is what goes on with the axle shaft inside the boot where pretty much all of them are tapered down to a narrower diameter since most of the deflection under torque apparently occurs in the center of the axle. My source goes up as high as ~97-99 on those cars and shows a 32 spline shaft and a 34 spline shaft with both being used on the Grand Prix but particularly the 34 with the supercharged engine.

The joint internals can often be swopped to make this work, for example the Fiero has a 32 spline shaft connecting the inboard and outboard joint, the G6 has a 33 spline shaft connecting its joints however the outboard joint cages use the same size roller balls so they can be disassembled and swopped. The inboard however in this case is very unique but that's because the 6spd manual originated in the Saab. GM uses a lot of the same parts so your inboard parts may be interchangeable. All of the 92-99 GM mini vans carry the 32 spline shaft along with several of the full size cars: century, regal, intrigue with a few exceptions. An axle builder can probably use stock parts to accomplish what you want, or you can disassemble your axles and send them in to Moser with $315 and tell them you want stronger axle copies.

The pre 2000 Grand Am uses a 32 spline shaft to connect the joints