OK, about a week ago I had the offside driveshaft on my 1991 Rover 214 fail. Basically it completely broke in two about a 1/3 of the way from the outer CV joint. There's a dodgy bearing in my gearbox which I've known about for the 9months I've had the car so I originally thought this had failed and put stress on the driveshaft which made it fail although when up on axle stands I ran the gearbox and it seemed its normal self. Also, after taking the driveshaft off, the inner CV joint was completely mangled although I wasn't too sure if this is what caused the driveshaft failure in the first place or whether driving for half a mile after it failed made a mess of this joint.
Anyway, I got a reconditioned driveshaft and after a lot of messing about, managed to get the gearbox spline end in. Put the other end into the wheel assembly and proceeded to tighten up the bolts for the lower suspension arm, and trackrod joint. However, the driveshaft now rubs against the bracket where the lower suspension arm attaches to the chassis to such an extent that I can't actually fasten the two tie bar bolts to the lower arm and have no idea what's going on. The recon driveshaft has slightly larger diameter than the old one but not to the extent where this problem should arise. Does anybody have any clues as to what might be going on?!
If the problem is something structural then this might explain why the old driveshaft broke at roughly the same point where the new one rubs against the chassis although there was nothing in earlier months to suggest that something as bad as this might have happened.