Shop Finished Building My New 4" Aluminum Driveshaft This Morning

I had a one piece drive shaft on my 02 PreRunner. After a few replacements due to the slip yoke bind, it fixed what Toyota couldn’t

 

A one-piece isn’t gonna do anything for axle wrap problems

 

Yes

The longer the driveshaft, the more money it costs to make it perform the same, vibration free, strength, etc

 

So Toyota is saving money on our two piece drive shafts, with carrier bearing, two additional u-joints, etc.
Yea, no..

 

you beat me to saying it. But OP wants a confirmation bias, so..

cool shaft, bro!

 

I beg to differ, it is the opposite. Put a 6" lift and go flexing. Your carrier bearing will be about to pop out the back of the seal. An easy test if your 6"+ unbolt the driveshaft, watch how much it gets pulled away once the bind is taken off of the carrier bearing.

exact opposite, it is much harder to get drivelines correct on a 2 piece, do some reading.

 

A steel driveshaft that long would be too much weight, thats why we go aluminum on these. Without the U-Joints and the slip yoke, I can hold the thing in one hand and twirl it.To make it that long they would have to use very expensive aluminum tubing, (aluminum custom made ain't cheap) plus going aluminum you have to use larger diameter tubing, without a lift you could have rubbing issues, but they could fix that by adjusting the body design.

 

Stops the jerk when you come to a stop. The carrier is holding tension and the springs haven't totally unloaded when you stop. Then the carrier unloads and you feel the jerk. Thats what i was referring to. You will have some axel wrap with heavy tires and alot of power no matter what with normal leaf setup, i know that.

 

Completely from scratch, (rough estimates because it costs by the inch for that tubing) all aluminum For PreRunners about $950 for 4WD he custom builds the slip spline so about $1,200. If you pay cash won't charge taxes so that knocks some off the total

The machined aluminum ends that are welded to the tubing where the U-Joint connects alone are about $400. The tubing for mine was $170, then add U-Joints and labor to weld and balance...

 

On 4WD trucks there's a slip yoke on the rear piece of the two-piece shaft that provides telescoping travel, so there's no pull on the carrier bearing. On your 2WD truck the telescoping happens at the transmission output shaft.

 

That’s the slip yoke binding…..

 

I know the slip yoke is on the transmission. When you have a 2 piece drive shaft the part between the transmission has limited amount it can slip. After that the carrier bearing starts to get pulled. I wish I would have taken a pic before I pulled my 2 piece off so you would understand. At rest, the carrier bearing was being pulled so much the boot was bulging out. With 6" of lift, when the measured it, the 2 piece driveshaft was about 1.5 inches to short. To bolt it back to the differential you had to pull the sh$t out of it to get the bolts in. So under flex it's even worse.

Even with a 4WD the slip in the rear shaft only gives you extra distance between the carrier bearing and the differential. So you won't have as much constant load binding, BUT with a 2 piece and with a 6" lift good luck getting your driveline straight again!

Have fun with your shims and drop brackets, etc... that never ends up correct anyway

After 8 put the 6" lift on my 2nd gen, Before I had the one piece driveshaft made I ran GoPro's under the truck for a couple weeks to watch how everything moves under different conditions.

If you don't have a lift, then don't worry about it, otherwise...

Keep your 2 piece and have fun with that.

 

^I'm lifted a bit over 4" in the rear, did zero action to change anything in the driveshaft and got zero vibes. I would never go 6" with a drop bracket lift because it's detrimental to off-roading.

How fast have you taken your truck? Many people who got the late Tom Woods one-piece driveshaft complained of vibrations above 80 mph, due to the lower critical speed of one-piece shaft.

 

FYI.... Before at 70MPH the vibrations from the 2 piece would get pretty bad then get worse the faster you went.

I just did a test run at 95MPH, zero vibrations.

Remember this only really applies ones you get to 5"+ lift

For all of the 2 piece driveshaft lovers out there, I have a brand new 2023 take off, 1,138 miles on it, sell it to you cheap

 

^Anyone with a 4x4 won't be able to use it.

 

how did the original one break?

 

^It didn't play nicely with his other mods...



For a highly-lifted street truck the one-piece aluminum driveshaft is a reasonable solution. 4th gen uses one-piece aluminum in most trims, with the tradeoff being a narrower fuel tank, losing ~3 gallons.

 

No it's the carrier bearing binding, run some GoPro's underneith and check it out

 

I'm sorry, but how does changing the drive shaft prevent axle wrap? You eliminated center bearings? (unless you are talking about carrier bearings) How? Please explain.

 

My 2nd gen has Alcans, the ones for this truck are on order

I only had the truck for 3 months, not everything is in yet, lol!

Right now I have 3" Deaver AAL with a new set of the recall 4 leaf 2nd gen leaf packs and 3" blocks. But no, having blocks or leafs doesn't matter when it comes to driveline angles.