I'm finding that this might not be as easy as he made out. I have separated the two halves:
https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/im...017/07/165.jpg
But it seems that the spline is too large to fit through the cup without me being concerned about potential damage to the dust cup seal.
The dust cap wasn't rattling around. It was stuck in it's skew place firmly. The shinny part was shinny when I first got the shaft brand new. You can see the line where they painted up to.
Fitting a brand new cup is on my list of things to do, but right now I just need to get the vehicle operational again even if it's only temporary.
Whilst I do plan to refit and confirm the length concerns, I am fairly certain that I observed the cup moving it's position while I had the grease gun on it pushing the grease in. So the shaft wasn't even moving at that time. Plus with Tom recognising this issue as a previous occurring one due to thick grease type (the type I was using), it seems plausible.
I'm running 3" lift. The double cardan was not much more than standard.

