Honda had several oversized yokes allowing the bearing cup to be hand assembled. The retainer clip will get spit out as the bearing cup turns. The bearing cup must have a proper press fit. My dealer let me get my 4th drive shaft spot welded. My other Talon is still ok with a bit over 6,000 miles on it. I marked the bearing cups and they have a good press fit. I carry a saw to cut the driveshaft in half so I can pull the drive shaft off the sub trans and drive it out in 2WD. With a 9 inch blade the drive shaft can be cut by going through the coolant drain hole in the skid plate. Paul F did a study and found several defective oversized drive shaft yokes. This one was beat up pretty good driving it 3 miles at low speed.
Honda Tech you should ask for another tech line tech that has experience installing a drive shaft U-joint. Techline can call in a couple of driveshafts and take them apart for inspection. Usually the U-joint at the other end will have a good press fit. Not all but most of the drive shaft failures I have seen are at the rear U-joint.
It was 45 years ago when I worked the powersports tech line for Honda. I worked my last 12 years on the Automotive tech line. We were ASE certified in everything. It was important for the tech line guys to install some warranty parts for testing and experience. Honda also had a model engineer for a difficult problem.
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