[Joe Dillard]

I've barely had time to work on my junk lately since I've been working at a job out of town & only coming home for part of the weekends. Anyway, with the help of a couple friends, my Jeep recently received an Atlas 5.0. With this install I needed to shorten my front driveshaft ~2.25". Since I don't have time during the week to either bring it to a shop to do it and my local shops are closed over the weekends, I decided to give it a shot at shortening it myself.

After seeing and reading about what various folks have done over the years, and talking with chef - I decided to give it a go ahead & see how things turn out. Enough of my babbling, lets get on to the task at hand. :D

I started test fitting things by bolting the shaft up to the transfer case end & bungee cord it up for measuring purposes. As you can see, with the shaft completely compressed, I needed to trim back ~2.25".





I decided that it would be a good idea to scribe a couple marks along the length of the shaft so that when I welded things back into place, I would be attaching the shaft back in phase & hopefully not cause any weird harmonics.



Next I decided to use my chop saw & hack it off ~3" back from where the tube is welded to the slip.





I then chopped off ~2.25" of the long side of the tube.



I used my bench grinder and ground down a 45* angle from both ends of the tube so I could prep it for a butt weld. I used my portable workbench/ladder, portable vice, a couple c-clamps and a piece of angle iron to help align things.

Once things looked good, I started to spot weld the shaft together, then ran a few short beads.





The fit seems about as good as I could have hoped, especially with me being a driveshaft 101 newbie. :D

[Rambo]

Now you can say "my shaft is a DIllard"



nice work

[Rollbar]

Nice, thanks for the pics.

R U gonna take it & have it checked for balance, I know it's for the front but U never know when U might need it to get home on the hwy.

[Joe Dillard]

Thanks guys.

Greenlantern,

Rollbar, My Jeep is almost never driven on the road. The exception is when I'm in Moab since I usually camp at Canyonlands Campground downtown & drive my junk to the trailheads. Other than that, it's pretty rare. But I fully understand what you mean there's still a slight chance.

What I do intend to do is have 2 new driveshafts made & carry my current ones as spares. This should happen within the next couple weeks.

[Jim B]

Good stuff here Joe.

Can I ask on the type blade you used to cut the shaft?

Glad you mentioned the 45 degree cut, many that try to join tubes do not do this and it really is a very strong way to have the weld join things together.

[cj-5]

Okay, nice job....

Here's a little trick that I picked up racing a few (several) years back.

-When you cut the shaft, cut it with a pipe/tubing cutter, like a pipe fitter or a plumber uses. this way it is ALWAYS a square and true cut. I have a tubing cutter that opens up to 5", and was bought for this purpose only.
Additionally, ensure that you aneal your weld after you are finished, so that it will not get britle and twist off beside the weld later.
There are loads of articles on proper anealing techniques online.

Hope this helps for the next one.

[Joe Dillard]

I left out the boring annealing junk from the thread because it's various formulas will be somewhat different for each application. But, if you must know - this is what I used.

Tm = 64.9°C + 41°C x (number of G's and C's in the prime circumfrence - 16.4)/N

OR

Tm = 81.5°C + 16.6°C x (log10[Na+] + [K+]) + 0.41°C x (%GC) - 675/N (taking into account salt concentration)

In other words, the length of both prime lengths are 30 bps, which include 20 bps initial template sequence and 10 for restriction enzyme and starting codon. The %GC contents are 53.3% for 5' and 60% for 3'. The Tms decrease to 65-70 based on different formulas one might have used according to the radiant temperature of the oven or micro wave processor used. The Tms are remain same if I taking into account salt concentration.

I think the temperature may be not the only problem, since I found there are 5 consecutive bases pair to each other between 5' and 3' prime intervals. I think that may form dimers and decrease the yield of pcr product. Do you think I can get rid of all possible variables if dimers are increased or anealing temperature all along or adding DMSO? (I tried, but I didn't see big difference)

Thanks.
Joe

[Jack H]

[Joe Dillard]

Jack H, on Aug 27 2006, 01:19 PM, said:

Exactly. I hardly think folks would be interested in the garbage that happens and doesn't really matter for most of us.

BTW: Jim.....I used a standard 14" cut-off wheel in my chop saw. Nothing special.