I have just taken my driveshaft to some folks for refinishing due to surface rust. I was offered to get it back with a sand blasted finish or with a black powdercoat and I need to decide ASAP. I thought powdercoating would be more durable than clear coating a blasted surface, but I am not sure if the powder coating process would ruin the grease in the joints. What do you guys think? Thank you.

Powdercoat BEFORE putting the u joints in

Don't do either.

The finish should be natural.

If it is only surface rust then clean it with an SOS pad.

Buy a 4" piece of PVC pipe with a cap. Put the drive shaft in the pipe and fill with Evapo-Rust. Will take less than a day to get rid of the rust. Clean and dry thoroughly. Clean with lacquer thinner. Then apply RPM to protect it.

Driveshaft will look brand new.

I agree, Talk to your powdercoater. Any areas that I did not want powder coating on I taped up, and pointed it out.

Morty426 is correct. The finish is natural steel.

I did the same thing to my driveshaft and the results were perfect. The only issue will be how bad the pitting is from the rust on yours. You can even use a torch to heat up the u-joint flange welds on the end to discolor them like they would have been from the factory.

You can fake the weld discoloring with some gunsmith blueing.

I soaked my shaft (driveshaft) in Evaporust but in the end I wasn't happy with the pitting. I ended up sanding the pits out and having the shaft rebalanced. I also added the heat treatment to the yolk welds and gun bluing weld line.

That looks really good!

Thanks B5Cuda. I'm very happy with how the drive shaft came out.