About a week and a half ago I was in the garage trying to decide what I wanted to work on next. I saw the driveshaft sitting there so I decided to work on it. Probably seven years ago I wire wheeled the shaft and brushed on some POR-15. Then I sprayed it with Detail Gray spray paint. Since then I've seen some awsome looking driveshafts restored and left bare metal. I wanted to see how nice I could get the driveshaft to look without using any paint. Well, it didn't turn out as nice as I had hoped since it was extremely pitted but I'll show what I ended up with anyway.

I started by brushing on some paint stripper to remove the Detail Gray paint. It came off easily. Here you can see the POR-15 underneith.


Next, I sanded off most of the POR-15 with 80 grit sand paper and removed the U-joints.


I went to the hardware store and bought some 4" PVC pipe and a cap. I poured EvapoRust in the pipe and inserted the driveshaft.


After a day of soaking, the shaft came out rust free. I still had paint and POR-15 on the ends which required a little sandblasting to clean up.


I was shocked to find a nice looking part number still on the driveshaft.


I sanded on the shaft a little but the pits weren't coming out. I got online and found out that driveshafts are only about a 1/16" thick so I decided to just leave it. I lightly bead blasted the shaft to remove some of the sanding marks. Finally, I rubbed it down with steel wool to get rid of the blasted finish. Once the ends were cleaned up I dipped them in my black oxide solution for 30 seconds to darken them. I rubbed them with steel wool to remove some of the darkness on the high spots.

I took the driveshaft to my father-in-laws house and he helped me reapply the heat markings from the end caps being welded to the tube. Over the weekend I heated the driveshaft and applied RPM to it so it won't rust again. I also applied some RPM to the new U-joints. While I had the new joints appart I noticed that one of the caps was missing two of the needles. :22yikes: I returned that one today and got a replacement. The only other thing I need to do is have it ballanced.

Here's the finished product. I took this picture without the flash to hide some of the pitting. Hopefully it will look OK under the car.