Can anyone tell me how difficult it is to extend the splines back along the drive shaft, towards the diff when working on
the outboard spline?
The reason I ask is because I want to shorten the drive shaft and figured that if can extend the splines along the shaft,
I could have it shorter buy machining to the correct length and machine in some grooves for circlips.
Just want to know if it can be done?

How much have you got to shorten them by

Not sure yet as they are still on the car, but it could be as much as 2"
The project is a gt6/cosworth turbo, so sierra rear reduced to approx 50/51"ish track width. Sorry I can't be more precise at the moment.

[Edited on 8/5/11 by spiderman]

There are folk who shorten halfshafts this way to make a narrowed axle for a hot-rod, but driveshaft splines will be much finer so I expect it'll be trickier.
On the other hand I got a set of custom made shafts for my Autograsser years ago & apparently they make the shaft then it gets hardened with a heat treatment process which would suggest once made you cant do much with the splines.
From another angle again I've cut, sleeved & welded them to make a custom shaft & it's worked fine, grasser folk have been doing that for years!

Thanks for the reply "hillbillyracer" I quess the custom shafts would be pretty expensive so I will probably go down the cut and sleeve option. If it works for a "grasser" with the type of loadings you boys put through them, I'm sure it would be fine for a road car and if I brake them then it's a custom made job.

[Edited on 8/5/11 by spiderman]

Actually although not cheap as chips, the custom shafts wern't mega money. It'd be 10-12 years ago & they cost something like £300 for the pair.
I've not been Autograssing for a while but I dont suppose that much has changed, welded diffs are common (mine was!) & the only time I had trouble with the shafts was if I tried to turn too tight at slow speeds & I'd pop the outer C.V. joints on the front wheel drive car I used. The custom made & welded shafts themselves were never a problem & I did'nt see many others break the actual shafts either.
When I sleeved & welded them I had sleeves that had to be heated to get the shaft in so they were a proper shink fit, I trued them up in a pair of V blocks & warmed them a little before I welded them to help avoid heat stresses.

Most cars on here will be built to take the standard driveshafts of the donor or use a live axle but there must be a few who've needed to do something like this, how hoave others solved this problem?

strikers, phoenix and fury have IRS rear end and so shorter driveshafts.

Raw did mine £75 for cut and welded pair (might be more now). They seem to work fine and we done well.

Matt

Cheers for that gem Matt,
Raw Engineering are only 3 or 4 miles from my place of work, I think I will visit them tomorrow and see what the New Managment are like, supposed to be as good as the old one by all accounts and they were always helpfull, dont know why I didn't think of them before. Doh!!