If the driveshaft is removed from the car, the CV joint should be able to move longitudinally. It would have to be horribly binded for this not to be possible.

Because the CV joint parts are constantly sitting in the same position, I have found they wear in this one spot, which then tends to created vibration at the resonant freq of the driveshaft, about 40-50 kph. Even if you dismantle the CV joint itself, the wear isn't obvious. Below is what I found helps. I have two 330s that this helped on. This was after replacing guibo and CSBs.

Dismantle the two halves of the driveshaft (mark alignment of the two before you do this). Remove the bearing out of the CSB. Either pop the covers and regrease the bearing or replace the bearing itself.

When you re-assemble the driveshaft, insert a shim about 1mm thick between the two. It needs to be inside diameter of 30mm. I found some on ebay they use on bobcats and other machines. You will have to grind it so it just sits on the inner race of the bearing. What this does is make the driveshaft about 1mm longer. The CV joint has a lot of fore/aft play in it, and all you are trying to do is have the natural place the balls sit inside the joint about 1mm different to where it was before, where the wear was.

Link to type of shim below
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/30mm-ID...or-Skid-Steer-Bobcat-Kubota/152104234756?hash=item236a1e6f04:g:jTIAAOSwt5hYhQiY

 

Thanks for sharing that with me. I am going to keep that in mind as I troubleshoot this issue. As far as the step about repacking/replacing the CSB bearing, that entire CSB assembly is so cheap nowadays that replacing the whole the whole unit is a better approach.

 

http://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/showparts?id=BJ53-USA---E36-BMW-325i&diagId=26_0286


In the above link, Item 14 is a bolt, Item 15 is the nut that goes to it. This is the connection of the drive shaft to the differential. The part you are asking about on the drive shaft is called a universal joint, or u-joint for short. The u-joint should be smooth in any direction it moves in, and it should move in every possible direction rotationally -- it should move around the centerline, not along the centerline.

 

This is more like what you should see on your car,

http://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/showparts?id=FA13-USA-08-2005-E53-BMW-X5_30i&diagId=26_0199

 

That is the type of driveshaft found on my car. However, even the drawing on Realoem.com does not match the actual driveshaft. In my case, the u-joint is on the guibo side in relation to the CSB. I have a 2001 330i RWD with manual transmission. It does not have the butyl tape either.