simple single cardan universal joint 5 of the prior art which is assembled as described above it includes a first yoke 10 and a second yoke 11 each of which has two ears 13 with bearing bores 14 for supporting bearings and a cross and bearing assembly the cross and bearing assembly includes a cross body or spider 12 which may be formed by any of several well known methods and which has four cylindrical tenons 15 projecting outwardly from the cross body on two orthogonal axes bearings 16 and seals 17 are provided for the tenons 15 for attachment in the bearing bores 14 of the yoke ears 13 to provide a reduced friction coupling in this design the bearings 16 are supported in the bearing bores of the ears 13 which must be sufficiently thick and sufficiently wide to support the bearings under load without permitting them to rock within the bore although this results in an excellent universal joint it is a relatively large heavy and costly joint which is difficult to assemble into automotive steering shafts in the cramped installation space available fig2 shows a universal joint 50 made with a compact cross and bearing assembly 35 according to the invention in this case yoke 20 has two ears 22 with cylindrical bores 24 on a common transverse axis yoke 30 also has ears 32 with cylindrical bores 34 on a common transverse axis but it should be noted that the diameters of bores 24 of yoke 20 are smaller than are those of.