I discovered that one of my drive shaft U-joints is on the way out. Looks like they are easy to replace however I need to decide on which brand to buy. Does anyone have any experience using Precision, ACDelco, Federated or Beck/Arnley? Are these any different than the "heavy duty" ones that MSA sells? If the drive shaft was going in my street 240Z then I wouldn't worry about it as much but this one is going in my track car so I want to make sure I pick a U-joint that will stand up to punishment the best.

I used the cheaper, ~$20 Precision u-joints from O'Reilly auto a couple of years ago to replace all four of my half-shaft joints. I noticed that they seemed to have a lot of play in the bearing when I was installing them, and found that they were very "clunky" while driving, which is the main reason I was replacing the old ones. I ended up taking them all back for a refund and using two old half-shafts from a parts car instead, which still had the original Nissan u-joints in good shape. Nissan spec'ed out tight tolerances on their factory u-joints, using the retaining clips to get the perfect fit.

The Precison joints might have been durable but they certainly left a lot of slack in the drive-train.

Find one that says "Made in Japan".

A friend of mine who has been a Z mechanic for many years said with U-joints always go OEM they are more expensive but do not have the play problems and won't fail prematurely. I took his advice and haven't had any trouble with them.