Long story short: I pretzeled my rear driveshaft on a rock while wheeling one day. I wanted it retubed with heavier tubing but local shops gave me a bunch of BS about the tubing being metric sized and i would have to buy 10 ft of it etc etc not to mention their shop rates. Then I came up with the idea of using tubing that is more commonly available.

Im using 1.75"x.125" wall DOM. The factory tubing is about .63" wall, so its almost twice as thick. The toyota driveshaft was over 2" in diameter so i had to do some clever machine work to use the smaller stuff.

Step one: obtain two driveshafts (technically, one complete driveshaft and one female slipyoke) they can be either front or rear, it doesnt matter, just be careful of the flange bolt patterns.

Step Two: Take the complete driveshaft, pull the slip yoke off of it and cut the male slip off the rest of the tube.



Step Three: remove the dust cover as shown (in my experience, they just trap water)

Step four: cut the male splined end as close to where it necks down as possible.

Step five: chuck the splined peice up in the lathe and turn it down to 1.503" for a slight press fit into the tube

Step six: disassemble the u-joint on one of the female yoke ends. chuck it up in the lathe and turn it down just like the male peice. cut it down to about 1" long (otherwise you will have a heck of a time pressing it in)

your two peices should look like this:

 

coming soon...

measuring and cutting tube

checking runout

welding and balancing

road test

 

You tease...

 

OK my brain must be stalling, I thought .6" is bigger then .1" even if we were talking about 100ths of an inch, where am I thinking wrong?
Or is that .6" supposed to be .06"

 

1/16" is 0.0625" or 0.063 rounded, as that is what he means I bet
thus 0.120" wall is almost twice as thick...

 

Awesome work. Subscribing.

 

whoops yeah, i meant .063"

i could just cut straight to a pic of the finished product and skip the write up if you prefer wabbit. ive already made one driveshaft like this and i have been running it for 7 months. now, this is a spare im making up.

a little talk about runout:

the 1985 FSM says that up to .031" runout in the center of the driveshaft is acceptable

most other places say that .015" runout is acceptable and under .005" is perfect.

when purchasing a peice of DOM for this, be sure to ask for the straightest peice possible and tell them you are making a driveshaft for use at high speed so they understand the importance.

 

progress?

 

How about now?

 

you've had plenty of time....tell us.

 

Assemble:
Measure the length TWICE, chuck up in a lathe, [one end at a time], use a dial indicator to get it nailed to a knat's short one's, weld it up while in the lathe.

Do the same with the other end, and it doesn't hurt to measure the length one more time, chuck it, use a dial indicator to center it, burn it together.

 

completed d-shaft after a few wheeling trips


The driveshaft is strong enough to hold the weight of the vehicle without buckling.




as with every upgrade, it just moves the weak link elsewhere. in this case, the new weak link is the cheap autozone u-joints i use. after a couple good hits they start getting sloppy, which is fine by me. i would rather replace u-joints than pinion bearings, t-case output bearings etc. and spare u-joints are smaller than an entire spare d-shaft, although i keep a complete one in camp.