as you can see the freshly shortened driveshaft has a sweet pinion angle about 2 degrees as measured 

I cut a hole under the spring shackel and flipped it over it gives a net gain of about a 4" lift without a lift block (which I removed) and corrects the driveline angle... 

here is a few shots of how to do a "shackel flip" 

lucky for me i have another motor I can use, a more stock chevy 350 

on the other side higher up is the other crack... 

Yeah its bad news... near the bottom you can see one of the cracks....