Making the wrong drive shaft work

[jahnaboi]

As long as your drive-shafts rear half is a male then you should be fine.

[rbartongrimley]

If the dude is intimidated by swapping the flange on the diff, then good luck making a "wrong driveshaft work" . WTF? Just take the nut off and swap the flange! It literally is harder to do an oil change than to swap the diff flange.

I am definitely not intimidated by doing this work. I work in a machine shop almost every day, and trust me, a differential does not intimidate me. Apparently you do not see my logic in not wanting to do this though; so I will explain it to you. The cost of error is higher in modifying my 2.93S differential, as opposed to messing around with drive shafts I have lying around, is significantly higher. Not to mention removing the differential from the vehicle again is significantly more work than modifying what is already out.

I have a solution for you. Most if not all 4 bolt e36 driveshaft rear halfs are of the same length. The difference between them is the front half which makes up for the longer or shorter transmission causing a variance between front half e36 drive shafts. If indeed the whole driveshaft is from an m3 your front half should require a 96mm guibo. If that is correct then just simply get a rear half from the junkyard from any e36 and be sure that there is no binding on the joints. Bring it to a local driveshaft place and have it balanced for 50 bucks. Either that or take a chance at aligning the balance marks although it will almost never work.

This makes sense. I was thinking of this and I had no idea if it would be a possibility. From your information, it sounds like it is. I am liking the way you think! This way I can ensure that my drive shaft is balanced also.

My third option at the moment is sketching up a cad drawing of the 4 prong adapter for the drive shaft and just make one. That really wouldn't be hard, but I would rather not go that route.