Bruiser / Mountaineer driveshaft upgrade

Several have asked for details on the drive shaft upgrades I did on my Bruiser chassis. The stock brass u-joints and sloppy shaft sliders were never my favorite features of these kits. I quickly wore out the brass joints years ago and swapped them out for steel Sand Scorcher joints which worked OK, but the slop was still in the shafts and they didn't really look very scale. Somewhere (forget) I found a great upgrade tip that was very affordable and easy to do. All you need are 2 each of the TRAXXAS 1951 & 4628 parts bags to make the two complete drive shafts. Modifying the yokes to fit the pinion shafts is easy - cut off the small hubs and drill out the bores to 5mm to fit the axle pinion shafts. pressing the metal u-joint into the yokes is a challenge, but the parts are very resilient. Just make sure you lube the parts with a good grease before pressing them together so they are smooth and aren't stiff. The front shaft is simple, you just need to cut the parts to the right length to allow for the axle travel needed. For the rear you need to use two female splined parts, cut one yoke off of the end of a male spline and use to join both together. You will need to fasten one female to one male and leave the other to telescope. I fastened mine together with one of the included longer 3mm grub screws by drilling then tapping with a 3mm tap and cutting the grub screw to the right length so there is no interference with adjacent parts. The Bruiser servo box can be very close. Again, getting the total length right so the rear suspension has full travel is important. I did have to shim the yokes to the axles a bit because the pinion shafts will hit the u-joints, but with ball bearings in the axles it runs nice and smooth. This change sure helped by Bruisers run smoother and I hope some 3-speeders find this helpful. let me know if I missed something - oh yeah, paint to match chassis.

UPDATE: even better hardened steel yokes are available from Traxxas - #4826X