Ordering A Driveshaft From Inland Empire Driveline Service

On our Project Way-Gone wagon we have been focusing on making this a running and driving car. We’ve been working on exhaust and fuel systems, but one crucial piece to the puzzle is a driveshaft to get the power from the engine to the ground.

With our past projects we called up and used Inland Empire Driveline Service. We’ve had basic one piece driveshafts made, aluminum driveshafts, even two piece driveshafts. We know that whatever we can throw at Inland Empire Driveline Service, they can handle it – especially for this build.

Calling up Jeff Gilroy, he gave us the low down on the entire ordering process. “In reality it’s as simple as giving us a few measurements and telling us what your plans are with the car,” explained Jeff. Hopping on the Inland Empire Driveline Service website we printed off the sheet, grabbed a tape measure and headed to the garage.

Get To Measuring!

Now before you get to measuring, you need to make sure the suspension is at ride height with all four wheels on the ground. If you measure with the suspension at full droop, then your driveshaft will most likely be too long. What we did was grab some jackstands and jacked the car up, putting the jackstands under the rearend so the rear suspension was weighed down by the car.

The first step is to measure the U-Joint size at the rearend yoke. Grabbing our trusty tape measure we started to get the dimensions. There’s two measurements you’ll need here. The diameter of where the U-Joint mates and the overall width where that U-Joint will bolt up.

Secondly you’ll need to know the overall length from the yoke to the output shaft. Don’t just guess where this measurement will be, there’s two specific points you’ll need to measure between. On the yoke side you’ll want to measure the flat surface where the U-Bolts go through. On the transmission side, you’ll measure the actual output shaft, how far it protrudes from the case.

Moving on to the transmission side, you’ll measure the distance the output shaft sticks out of the transmission, along with how many splines are on that output shaft. That’s all the measure you’ll need – five measurements in total.

“We need to know what rearend you’re running and what transmission as well. We like to know your plans with the car to make sure we build the right driveshaft to handle the horsepower you’re putting out,” Jeff explained.

More Than Measuring

While the ordering process is really easy, there’s actually a lot more to a driveshaft than a piece of pipe and some U-Joints. A few years back we took a tour of the Inland Empire Driveline Service facility and learned a ton about driveshafts. We learned things like how to avoid a driveshaft that will shake you to death going down the road and what whipping point is. You can check that article out here.

With our measurements complete, we sent off our order form. A week or so later our new driveshaft showed up ready to be installed for thousands of trouble free miles.

To order up your driveshaft, hop on Inland Empire Driveline Services’ website or give them a call at (800) 800-0109.