Technical Solid vs Tubular Drive Shaft

Hey guys sorry for more newb questions but here we go. I am putting a 35’ rear in my AV8 project and I see it has a 10 spline tubular drive shaft in it. I’ve been swapping the hydraulic brakes off of a 47’ rear ended and it has a 6 spline solid drive shaft. I’m for sure going to have to shorten my drive shaft and was wondering should I be looking at using the solid shaft out of the later rear ended? Seems like it would be easier to shorten. Is some one producing a 10 spline end to use on a solid shaft? I feel like I could cut up the tub axle and turn a piece to put the solid shaft on that splined end if I had to. Sorry in advance if I’m recreating the wheel here. Lol


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a model A is short enough wheelbase that you can use the original solid A shaft. figure out your length, and find a shop to mill the 6 spines in to match the coupler you have. make sure the bearing surface at the front of the drive shaft is good. some folks use the tapered 35 drive shaft to make exhaust megaphones. have fun!

 

You should be able to have a shortened model A drive shaft have ten splines milled into it as well at a competent machine shop...

 

also, many folks have just welded the coupler to the drive shaft and got away with it for thousands of miles. i prefer to have it machined correctly if you have a good shop near by. last one i did, i chopped off a 1/4" of an old 6 spline shaft, then made a jig to hold that up on my friends milling table at the correct height, and he just copied it by hand. if you look closely at the 6 splines, its a W shaped cut. this is because, looking at it from the end with a spline at 12 o:clock, the W shape is horizontal on the two splines at 10 and 2 o:clock. so, they cut those two splines at the same time, then rotate to the next one which leaves the little shoulder of the center of the W. i thought this was done with a special shaped cutter from ford, and took a shaft to a gear cutting company here, and they said no, you do that by hand, in a mill, no such thing as a cutter that shape. well, thats how it went here, maybe your machine shop will differ.

 

After doing some reading today I actually feel like I know less now then I did. lol maybe I'm just to dumb here. So my banjo is a 35' and there for a tube shaft, which also means that my torque tube has no center bearing. If I'm understanding correctly I can salvage the shaft from my original Model A rear end and modify it to fit the 10 splines on my 35'. I think Macs sells the 10 spline adapter and I could do the old bore it out weld it thing and it should work fine.

 

those couplers are hard as hell. have you checked the gear ratio of the 35? numbers are on the bottom of the case, or count teeth. many were 4.11, your 47 is most likely 378. you may want to check. if you use the 6 spline, you dont have to buy a coupler.

 

I’d have to measure but I feel like the 35’ is wider than the model a axle and the 47 is wider than the 35’. Yeah the 35’ is 4.11


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yes, the 47 has wider bells and axles, but the center section would work with your 35 bells and axles and spider gears. then you could check it all out, and put seals in the axle bells while its apart.