Whelp... there is more room that the drive shaft can go into the trans, ~ 17 mm or so... and that's with the slots on the mount fully consumed... However I think that is by design so you can remove this part of the drive shaft without disrupting the entire drive line for Trans work, etc....

However, I cannot buy that I missed locating the drive shaft mounts that much - especially since they are formed to the sheet metal of the car - they just would not have laid down well enough to weld in the wrong location.
So as my old middle school wood shop teacher used to say, "Measure twice and cut once" - I put the wheel on to see how it looked in the wheel well and... all I can say is no mi gusta:

I think I am going to back away from the drive shaft shortening idea and return to the trailing arm length conspiracy theories - I, of course, busted the bolt trying to harvest my GT ones so I think its a trip to car-parts.com.
I wouldn't wish working on a 15+ year old midwestern car on my worstest of enemies (Ya that's right - worstest)
This post has been edited by qatar11: May 11, 2013 - 3:11 PM