I'd call @Shawn at Tom Wood's and ask.What are the aftermarket guys doing that I cannot do locally?
What is the secret to off road shafts?
A big second for Tom Woods. They will walk you through how to measure properly, build one for you, then ship it out quickly. If available, go with non-greasable joints. Unless of course you don't mind crawling under the Jeep every 3K to 5K miles to grease them!
I used to make shafts but for different applications. Just asking what the secret to the Tom Woods shafts is.
Material, welding, and year's worth of knowledge and experience. Let's also not forget good people that care about what they do!
Just asking what the secret to the Tom Woods shafts is.
I used to make shafts but for different applications. Just asking what the secret to the Tom Woods shafts is.
Any competent driveshaft shop can make good driveshafts, the secret to Tom Wood's (not Woods) shop's success is his unsurpassed pre and post-sales support. Tom has mostly retired now, and what a nice guy he truly is after having met and talked with him for quite a while, so his son Shawn has taken over. Shawn is a credit to his dad, he's also a member here.I used to make shafts but for different applications. Just asking what the secret to the Tom Woods shafts is.
Hey everyone. Wow, I'm very honored that so many people speak so well of us, thank you.
To answer the question of what can aftermarket do that the local place can't: Well it depends on which aftermarket company you are talking about and who you have local. There are many local shops that do an excellent job and take pride in what they do. There are also online-type drive shaft companies who frankly do an awful job. Local depends on where you are, if you live in Ogden Utah we're the local shop! Not all local shops are good at getting their name out there nationally. Or maybe they don't even want to have that business model in the first place. Likewise, not all companies that are good at getting their name out there nationally are good. The point I'm trying to make is that reputation is the thing I'd focus on. If a local shop has a bunch of google reviews and they are close to 5 star rated they probably do a good job and deserve your business. The only thing I'd recommend is that if you have a local shop that you contact them first and get some pricing and turn around times. I hear from customers frequently that their local shop told them it would be $600 and 3 weeks for their local shop to build a shaft that we can do for $400 in 1-2 days.
My personal view is that I wish there were more good local shops scattered across the country. As a consumer myself I hate that I have to order everything online nowadays and wish I could go to a local specialist store and get the things I need. Plus, there's a lot of things that we or companies like us don't do and I hope that the local shops stick around so they can help local customers with those things. Anytime I can help a smaller shop somewhere with some parts or some knowledge I do. We're not trying to take all the business away from the smaller more regional shops, we're just here to provide a good option for those of you who don't have a good local place. Anyways, good is good, that could mean the 1-man operation down the street or it could mean someone like us or Adams.
That being said, places like us or Adams are 4WD and Jeep specialists so we probably have better knowledge, parts, and processes in place for building 4WD and Jeep drive shafts than most regional shops. If you want to learn more about what we might be doing differently you can read about it here https://4xshaft.com/pages/about-us. You're going to find a similar story and similar products if you look into or ask about places like Adams or JE Reel.
Any competent driveshaft shop can make good driveshafts, the secret to Tom Wood's (not Woods) shop's success is his unsurpassed pre and post-sales support. Tom has mostly retired now, and what a nice guy he truly is after having met and talked with him for quite a while, so his son Shawn has taken over. Shawn is a credit to his dad, he's also a member here.
https://4xshaft.com/
I would have whoever you select use Spicer 5-1310x u-joints which are significantly stronger and more durable than what the factory installed.
Thanks everyone. I aint great at asking the right questions. What I should have asked is if the tubing was a thicker wall than stock. That has been answered.
The big truck shafts were built to be the weak link where the tubing would twist before affecting the rearend or transmission. In our Jeeps, would the weak link be the u-joints?
Thanks everyone. I aint great at asking the right questions. What I should have asked is if the tubing was a thicker wall than stock. That has been answered.
The big truck shafts were built to be the weak link where the tubing would twist before affecting the rearend or transmission. In our Jeeps, would the weak link be the u-joints?
I usually bad at answering things in comparative terms like thicker just because I don't always know everything about the thing I'm comparing ourselves to. But if we are comparing to stock, absolutely, the tubing is going to be much stronger than stock from about any drive shaft supplier you use. Pretty much the industry standard with tubing on an aftermarket TJ shaft is 2" diameter .120" wall. We use DOM, some use CREW. Most reputable shops are using Neapco and Spicer parts. For the most part, these are the only parts worth using. During 2021 there were huge supply chain shortages and we were constantly trying to find alternative sources to things to keep things rolling. I'd sometimes order in parts from manufacturers other than Neapco or Spicer to test them out. I'd do a hardness test of the material using an ultrasonic hardness tester and I'd do destructive testing alongside a Spicer and/or Neapco part as a control. More often than not the conclusion would be that we were better off not selling shafts than using the alternative supplier. There can be a pretty big quality gap between different components. Usually the cheap stuff is just that, cheap. We use way more Neapco parts than Spicer. That is because Neapco has shown more of a willingness to make things that are focused on and designed for aftermarket applications and because when/if there is a quality issue Neapco takes it far more seriously and addresses it more quickly. Because shops pretty much using the same parts there is a lot to be said about what someone does with those parts, how much experience and care they have when doing the work.
We don't design any part of the shaft to be the weak link or the fuse. We try to keep all the components equally matched. When it comes to tubing, the main thing we might upgrade on some shafts is wall thickness. But that is not in increase torque capacity, it is to increase rock/dent resistance. I don't like any part of the shaft to be the weak part, I want the entire shaft to be capable of meeting the needs of the vehicle. That being said, if someone says they want a 1350 series shaft in their TJ with a stock transfer case and stock axles I will tell them it's a bad idea because it would be making the shaft significantly stronger than the rest of the jeep. Evenly and adequately matched is our focus.
We do have many of the key features of our shafts listed on the product pages. Example https://4xshaft.com/products/tj-front-drive-shaft?_pos=1&_sid=544dba8b8&_ss=r.