March 21st 2007:

I spoke with Tom regarding upgraded shafts for the new JK at the CAL4WD convention when it was here in Reno. I touched base again with him this morning.

Tom is expecting to be releasing the drive shaft's for the JK in about 2 weeks. He will be offering 1310 and 1350 CV's on the shafts and will include a CV up front. Woody's will be upgrading the shafts but will also be removing the balancers and changing the pinion mounting with new mounting plates from the factory setup.

Some late changes at DC in the shaft design caused Tom to be a little behind on his drive shafts for the JK. One of those was a factory change to a new output spline on the transfer cases. This wasn't a ordinary spline count so Tom had to make some last minute changes to accommodate the new DC design.

Tom is working with one lift company and one would assume (or at least it is my assumption) that since both are in the Salt Lake area it is Tera Manufacturing, and their conclusion so far is a critical need to replace the front shaft only on a 4.5" lift.

I personally will upgrade both shafts as the pencil thick area of the factory drive shaft makes me a little nervous.

Tom has speculated that a person should budget around $500 per shaft.

Sweet deal. JE Reel, Coast, and now Woods are on board. Hopefully High Angle will step up too.... maybe even with a 1410. That could be a little overboard though :p .

-Living Still

I know someone who has mentioned the failures of the stock CV on the shafts already. The type of CV used is great for a smooth ride, but they will wear when they are worked on the trail and eventually fail. Apparently it happened on testers and there have been some warranty claims on them.

The biggest problem with them is that if/when they do fail, there is no easy trail fix since it's not a straightforward carden joint.


If you wheel, upgrading to regular double carden style shafts would be beneficial on lifted rigs. There are a lot of owners that are naysaying, but it's going to become a bigger problem the more they wear.