Everyone seems to make note to mark the driveshaft and then the flange so it goes back in the same orientation as it came out. Without having a driveshaft, and picking one up from wherever, I wonder if this is going to cause me a problem. Last thing I want to do is spend money and introduce a vibration that isn't there now.

I have to laugh at myself because we got about a foot of snow a few months back and I took that thing everywhere, powering through the snow like a plow. Never once got stuck or came close to it. All the time, I thought that was because the all wheel drive was doing it's job lol

I do question if it's worth doing at this point. My guess is that the splines wore out and someone pulled it off because they didn't want to pay to fix it. In looking at the history of this car, it had one owner up to about 90,000 miles and then it had 2 or 3 owners from 90,000-120,000. There was evidence left in the car from owners and I googled 2 of the last owners and they lived in lower end housing, so my belief is that they got sticker shock on items and sold it to the next person instead of fixing things.

Having said that, I do fear that it was something deeper and putting that shaft in is going to highlight some other issues that I don't know about, but I guess I'll have to roll the dice and fix those issues if they do arise.