Driveshaft gauge?

Trying to find the thickness of the metal used in the rear OEM driveshaft to compare to aftermarket brands.
If anyone knows or has cut one open, thanks in advance!

 

I have an Amazon-grade ultrasonic metal thickness gauge, might be able to get a reading on that.

 

Hmm, worth a shot? I know ballpark it's under 0.120" and over 0.04", which isn't much to work off of lol

 

Gauge says 1.8mm on my 2000 3rz, soo .0709 inches

 

Sweet. And that's the rear one, correct?

 

Yup.

 

Aftermarket driveshafts are poo dude. Stick with OEM. I hear AZ salvage yards have quite a bit. car-part.com, you might luck out and locate a 4wd DS or could just have yours shortened at one of your local DS specialist shops.

Stay away from WholesaleImportParts & DriveShaftStore (same company). @Nessal has one and so do I. The one I received came with a POS carrier bearing that I ended up replacing as soon as I had it installed. The DS I have from them does have greasable u-joints but its anyones guess who makes them. Nessal's DS does not have greasable u-joints.

It's on my things to do list but as soon as I find the time, going to have an OEM ds re-balanced and checked. As soon as that is done this aftermarket DS is going back in a box.

 

I would agree with the mass produced aftermarket driveshafts.

I am lucky I have two good drive shaft builders near to me.

Re tubing is not that difficult just cut your ends off weld them on a new tube shorten or lengthen no problem.

Need new ends they are easy to find!

I watched a few times when mine were done over the years.

 

I'd say the balancing would be the difficult part from a DIY perspective.

Fwiw I don't have the originals

 

Like anything else watch a driveshaft being balanced with the right tooling like anything else is not hard.

You need to have driveshaft builders nearby post Covid some many things are different price wise.

Sadly it still comes down to who you know.

The idea of buying used what you need have them gone over might be your best option .

best of luck!

 

for sure car-part.com. I got most of my parts for my 4x4 conversion through them including drives shafts

 

Yeah I didn't have good experience with wholesaleimportparts driveshaft. The first one I received was defective so I had to send it back. The second I got was fine but after around 15k miles, either one of the U-joint is busted or the bearing in the double cardan is shot. In addition, the rubber boot on the carrier bearing is already starting to show cracking. The driveshaft is also much smaller in diameter than the OE shaft. It looks like it is more suited for a passenger car and not a truck. At any rate, I'm going to run it until it bust and then I'm going to go pick up a OE one from the salvage yard. I regret giving my OE driveshaft away at this point.