unless you have a offroad only jeep, imo i would not take this advice for a street driven jeep. a ds needs to be balanced on a balancing machine or you will have vibes. and the method suggested to lengthen it is ghetto as can be.

 

This is not the way to go the shaft is the cheapest part you need to have any of them rebuilt with larger joints and gone over. Usually cheaper in the long run to buy a custom shaft for $200 that is already done properly and ready to pop in, I checked both ways when I bought mine.


It all boils down to doing things right the first time.

 

it's fine so far, and I'm in highschool on a budget. I'll get nice shafts one day.

 

Ya, shortening is really easy, to lengthen will take you couple hrs because you have to a steel shop and get few inches of inner and outer pipe. Slide the pipe inside of cut driveline (after you clean the burrs off from cutting) then your extra one inch or so can slide on that, weld it up.

 

Oh and I wouldnt rebuild anything till it breaks, kinda paraniod i think. But if you do make sure to go rebuild all the other parts on your Jeep because they are used too lol

 

I have welded 35 front with chromo shafts, welded 8.25 rear with a hack snd tap/ front driveline in rear. Ive busted the u joint that meets yoke for rear end twice now, got a spicer one and now it ripped the bolts and horseshoe clamps for the same joint but it sure would be bad *** to replace the joints and the yolks. Its the only thing that breaks on my drive train is that crystler 8.25 yolk/ joint/ straps/ bolts

 

well I didn't weld mine, I put a locker in it. Haven't had a problem yet I'm on 31s and daily drive it. And I'm really interested into how you put a 35 in the front... Never heard of that mod. Welding differentials definitely isn't something I would do. I have an AA sye with a hd main shaft for the transfer case hack and taps stick out so far you can bend the output shaft.

 

Welded dana 30 with 35's i mean If the shaft was going to bend that would have already happened. thanks for the lesson though lol

 

I did some research and found that an AA SYE w/ 231 transfer case protrudes 7.25" from the transfer case housing. I marked that point of reference and then ran a measurement from that reference point to the yoke of my rear pinion and came up with a measurement of 33.5" for my required driveshaft length after installing my SYE. This is due to my 3" lift and Dana 35 rear axle.


With that being said, will a 33 or 33.5" ZJ shaft be too long for my setup? The driveshaft measurements in the picture posted earlier are for collapsed lengths, correct? So if a collapsed ZJ shaft is 33 or 33.5 and my measurement is 33.5, is that a problem or will it work?


After a few days of searching, I found a ZJ shaft for sale out of a 96 4.0 auto with the 242. Should be either 33" in 33.5" in length collapsed if those charts are correct. This is better than the XJ shaft I found for sale for $50 that I would need to lengthen.


Also, is my measurement going to read higher yoke-to-yoke if the driveshaft is disconnected as opposed to measuring with the driveshafts on?

 

Ah! Thank you! Now I can correctly credit him. Thanks man, been trying to hunt that down for a while