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Square Front Drive Shaft?

B

big jimmy 91

1/2 ton status
Joined
Feb 21, 2004
Posts
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Location
Northwestern Ontario Canada
Hello there, I was told a few times that a square front drive shaft if possible. Does anyone have any idea how this is done? I tried in search and am not too sure if it was working or not. Any ideas or details would be greatly appreciated. Thanks guys! And by the way this site rocks I visit it as much as my busy schedule allows and have found it quite informative on many occasions. /forums/images/graemlins/weld.gif
 
BadDog runs them....
ww09.jpg


Marv
 
Why would you want a square shaft? Anything in torsion is stronger designed as a tube. Can you say stress concentration?

-Chris
 
I've seen front ones but that looks like a rear one too!!! I doubt that thing ever sees the street so having it balanced doesn't matter. I'm thinking of running a square front shaft just because it's cheap and has loads of travel. You can also have spares up the ying yang with something like that. /forums/images/graemlins/thumb.gif Spares are good MMMMMMkay /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif
 
[ QUOTE ]
Why would you want a square shaft? Anything in torsion is stronger designed as a tube. Can you say stress concentration?

-Chris

[/ QUOTE ]

Well I woulden't realy define the difference in tube shape to cause a stress concentration /forums/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif But it is definatly true for a given wall thickness it is weeker.

But ware can you find a .25 wall thickness tube - 3 foot travel slip yoke shaft for 35$. Most people use 2x2x.25 inner tube and eather reciever tubing or 2.5x2.5x.25 for the outer. Beleave me you are not going to hurt the shaft.

Do a search over in the Pirate - toyota section for it. There are hundreds of threads on the subject.

Here you can see mine. /forums/images/graemlins/thumb.gif

Dscf0087.sized.jpg
 
How did you weld the yokes on there?? just use some of the tube and stick it in the square tubing and weld where you could then just fill in the rest or what??
Thanks
-Chris
 
Yes , I would also like to know what the best method is to attach the yoke to the square tube to keep it running as true as possible /forums/images/graemlins/thinking.gif

Thanks for your replies everyone /forums/images/graemlins/thumb.gif

BTW those are some really good pics. /forums/images/graemlins/bow.gif
 
The outer tube had the stock slip yoke (female blazer rear) shoved in it, witch fits very well so it is nicely centered. I used a couple of plug welds (you can just see them in the pic) to keep the yoke from pulling out of alignment when I welded it up.

The inner half I simply took and put inside about 3" of the stock tube. It is pushed in all the way to the yoke and again uses plug welds in there. On this side I used some filler material while welding bedause the stock tube is so thin. At first I was worried about doing it like this but after having the shaft supporting the front of the truck while turning on a rock...I am sure it will hold up for me.

Most setups I have seen totaly take the stock tube off the yoke and grind a square in the origional yoke to fit the new tube. I will probubly do this when I find an upgraded shaft (larger joints) and use the 1/2 ton one I have now as a spare.
 
Thanks a million , this will really help out a buddy of mine that just destroyed his front shaft /forums/images/graemlins/waytogo.gif
It is also something that I myself will be doing when I can upgrade my own drivetrain from stock /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif
 
i have one in the rear of my truck and drive it on the road as a daily driver and no vibs.

there is a problem with them and that is there it to much friction in them so it grabs and has strip the bolts on my tranny and the same thing happened to Russ(baddog).

you need to have less contact area plus lod it with greese

Andrew
 
I see now. That is a really smart way to build a cheap long slip shaft.

-Chris
 
Square driveshafts are a good idea but still need tweeking to get them to work properly.

Russ (Baddog, truck pictured above) ripped the transmission in half because of his rear square driveshaft. Andrew (77ChevyK10) stripped out the bolts between the trans and tcase adapter.

There is a thread about it in the Center Of Gravity forum. Basically an unlubed square rear shaft with full contact areas is BAD and will distroy something. It needs to be lubed somehow (drylube, grease, something) and the surface area of the shaft may need to be reduced so it will slide under suspension load with motor torqueing against it. Currently it is believed that the high amount of surface area coupled with the torque of the motor causing friction and no lubrication is making the rear shaft act like a solid peice of tube.

This will cause something upstream to give and that is something in the transmission housing or the transmision adapter. I did something similar Friday night by bottoming out my driveshaft. It tore my case in half and bent the rear output shaft in the case. It was an aluminum case so that is possibly why it didn't break the tranny (that I know of).

Beware, square is still under development.

Harley
 
Even smarter would be to tap some holes for grease fittings. Even smart than that would be to look at the surface area of the slip joint, do some friction calculations and then drill some holes to reduce the surface area of the inside tube.

I don't need one, but I want to make one now.

-Chris
 
I drove about 100 miles with a square shaft in the rear of my truck, worked out fine...vibrated after about 50 mph, but I also realized that I had it in 4 wheel drive (hubs unlocked) the whole time so that may have cuase more vibes /forums/images/graemlins/dunno.gif

Anyways they seem like a good idea for at least the front shaft. You could also make a spare to fit the front or rear (in a Blazer). I want to make one now. Has anyone tried using the cv joint from a front shaft on their square shaft? I was thinking of trying that, and also heard of putting ATF inside it to kind of balance it.
 
I have never heard of anyone putting atf in a square driveline, but I run about a pint of ATF in my homemade round rear and front shafts. I have had my truck well over 100 mph and it seems to work well. I dont know if it would work in the square shaft because of the nature of the fluid wanting to "flow" around the tube... it wont really "flow" smoothly in a square tube like it does the round...
 
[ QUOTE ]

Beware, square is still under development.

Harley

[/ QUOTE ]

Um you act like square drive shafts are something new? I have herd of them for atleast 4 years now and I'm sure they have been around for longer than that. /forums/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif

I'll have to read the COG thread but I would realy dought that there is more surface contact area on a square shaft than a splined shaft. Esentualy the square shaft only has 4 contact points (or splines), and a real drive shaft has something like 10-15. Now if someone had not greased it than that would be a problem.
 
Hum after reeding and thinking I am going to have to take some of that back. Since the contact length of a square shaft is so much longer they would have almost the same surface area...

But Jimmy88 brought up another thing I forgot

[ QUOTE ]
Russ, I’’d be concerned about just plain friction first. Confirmed by the Machinery’’s Handbook
(rock solid source of information), the laws of friction basically say for dry or unlubricated
surfaces, that until you get to abnormally high pressures, that friction in both the total amount and
the coefficient are independent of the areas in contact. That means until it gets to some undefined
high pressure, the surface area or psi or clamping force are not important for calculating forces
due to friction as long as its not close to galling. Just multiply the total force pushing the surfaces
together times the coefficient of friction.

[/ QUOTE ]

Furthermore I am still not convinced that this was the cause for these guys braking. There is no real evidence that the shafts caused this... If there was a sugnificant problem with square shafts we would be seeing alot more falures from the thousands of trucks running square shafts.

Oh and grease is your trucks friend /forums/images/graemlins/thumb.gif
 
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