drive shaft
Turbo Mini Forums

just rebuilding my min at the mo, bieng resprayed at the mo and getting ready for the turbo conversion. previously had a stage 3 998 in it, will the driveshafts be ok from a 1 litre for a turbo conversion (1293)?
thanks mark

1310 - Supercharged 16v Twin Cam - 190BHP - SC Built.
1293 - Turbo 16v Twin Cam - Build Commenced

yep as long as your cv's are all in good order

"Can I legally marry people now that I am ordained in the Church of the SubGenius?" aka i know jack sh"t

i also make things

i love coming home to chrome

as long as you are not going from drums to discs

As others say, it is the outer CV's that will cause a problem rather than anything else. As long as they are not shot to pieces already they should be OK.

Most people seem to stick with the standard shafts. I've never heard of any real problems with them, they're not usually a particular weak point.

Phil.

WWW.TURBO-MINI.COM

I think what Wolfie was getting at was that the drum braked CV joints are quite a bit smaller, and so not really up to the torque from a turbo motor. As long as you swapped the CV joints when you did the disc conversion (which I am sure you will have done) you ought to be fine.

I have see drum braked cars with the thicker shafts, whether they were there from new or not i don't know.

The thicker shafts are essentialy the same(ish) length all the way down where as the thin ones are visably smaller than the spline that goes into the outer CV.

at a guess i'd say the thicker ones are about 1" and the thinner aabit less than 3/4"

The "thin" shafts were fitted to the early 80's economy minis with the long final drives e.g. 2.95:1.

Quite what Austin Rover were trying to achieve by doing this I am not quite sure. Maybe it was an effort to reduce inertia of the drive assembly?
Anyway, what I can say is that even these thin shafts are well up to the job, the failure point of either type is the sharp edged groove machined where the CV joint locates. Class 1 autograss racing means using whatever you can lay your hands on cheaply, hence I have seen a number of the "thin" shafts given very hard use. They obviously do not have the torque of a turbo motor, but the shock loads imposed by the nature of the surface is far more likely to break a shaft than ever pure torque is.
However in road use, you will generally destroy the CV joint before the actual driveshaft gives any problems.