CASE STORY · BQ-STEEL AND IQ-STEEL · THE DRIVESHAFT SHOP
BREAKING WORLD RECORDS
WITH UNBREAKABLE STEEL
The Driveshaft Shop, a specialized machine
shop in Salisbury, North Carolina, is pioneering custom-made axles and drive shafts for
high-performance and competition automobiles. Manufactured from BQ-Steel® and
IQ-Steel® X-grades, these components are
helping their customers break records all over
the world.
Imagine the magnitude of torque that cars competing in a drag
race – an all-out acceleration contest from a standing start – put
on their axles. With some engines packing a 3,000 horsepower
engine – more than 10 times the average power of a standard
car – the turning force would snap a standard axle like a toothpick. But axles built at the Driveshaft Shop are specially built to
withstand these loads.
In the Driveshaft Shop’s 50,000 square foot machine shop, 24
machinists are busy turning out some 60 axles a day, designed
for a wide variety of street and drag racing competitions. Ninety
percent of these axles are built from BQ-Steel (Bearing Quality)
and IQ-Steel (Isotropic Quality) X-grades, steel noted for exceptional purity, fatigue strength and toughness.
In recent years, cars equipped with axles built with Ovako steel
have swept the top prizes and broken records in multiple race
categories, from drag racing and rally, to drifting, autocross
and touring. Frank Rehak, president of the Driveshaft Shop,
says there are so many categories of races worldwide that it’s
impossible to keep up. Nevertheless, he says, “all of the records
broken have been done on Ovako steel,” he says.
As a leading producer of
these specialized components
for the motorsport industry,
Rehak is intimately familiar
with the racing axiom that
failure is not an option. Prior
to using Ovako’s high-end
steel, the company had long
relied on AIS/SAE 4340 and
300M, an aerospace-certified
steel. Both are high-strength
steels noted for their toughness. However, the quality of
the 4340 deliveries differed
significantly from load to
load. Naturally, this led to
some reliability problems.
“We had issues with bars
breaking like crystal or as if
Frank Rehak, president of
cut length-wise by a laser.
Driveshaft Shop
One delivery would be fine,
another not so good. You had no idea where your distributor was
getting his material from,” Rehak says.
The problem with 300M was its availability. “The mills only did
a certain amount per year and of course the aircraft industry
always got priority. So we had to pay whatever they wanted –
and sometimes we couldn’t get it when we wanted it.”
Then, about five years ago, Bruce Christopher of Ovako walked
into Rehak’s booth at a Performing Racing Industry event and
convinced him to try out IQ-Steel X bars from Ovako.
“The metallurgist at Ovako played with the finer ingredients
and the heat treatment of the material,” Rehak recalls. “Once
we got the recipe down, the Ovako steel was stronger than it
was in a good batch of Standard 300M steel!”
“We exchanged a lot of information about what I needed and
they shared their knowledge about what they could do. They
were willing to try different things. This was important for us and
they came through for us. Today, we boast about the fact that
we’re buying steel from Sweden for our axles,” Rehak adds.
Annually, the Driveshaft Shop purchases about 100 tons of
Ovako steel in a number of sizes. Once delivered to the shop,
these bars are cut to length, machined to produce CV (constant
velocity) splines – the “teeth” on the side of the axle that engage
with matching grooves in the socket that enable the transfer of
power from the engine to the wheels. The axle is then sent out
for heat treatment and then returned for power coating. The last
step is the assembly of the whole axle.
About BQ-Steel and IQ-Steel
Bearing Quality Steel (BQ-Steel) and Isotropic Quality Steel
(IQ-Steel) are advanced, inclusion-controlled steels providing
consistent quality characterized by exceptional toughness and
strength.
BQ-Steel benefits:
• Consistent quality
• Superior service life
• Based on 100 years of steel manufacturing
• Macroscopic cleanliness control with immersion
ultrasonic testing
IQ-Steel benefits:
• Material properties matching remelted steels
• Consistently high quality
• Low micro-inclusion limits
• Immersion ultrasonic testing
• Isotopic material properties
Ovako facts and figures
• A leading producer of engineering steel for customers in
the bearing, transportation and engineering industries
• Products: low-alloy steels and carbon steels in the form of
bars, tubes, rings and pre-components
• Locations: Ovako has eleven production plants and
a number of sales companies in Europe and the USA
• Net sales 2014: 862 MEUR
• Total steel production capacity: 1.3 million tons (MT) per
year
• Employees: 2,925
The Driveshaft Shop facts and figures:
• Established over 30 years ago by the father and uncle
of current owner and president, Frank Rehak, in Salisbury,
North Carolina
• Privately owned company
• Produces custom-built performance, classic and off-road
applications including large selection of important and
domestic CV axles for racing
• Daily production of 60 custom-made axles a day
• Sales have increased by about 20 percent a year
Ovako 20150604
©
“We have been pioneering the whole CV revolutionary in
after-marketing axles and drive shafts, and we’re using the
Ovako steel in the spline,” Rehak explains. “We’ve been doing
performance axles for over 14 years – and drive shafts for over
35 – and we’re constantly looking for ways to improve our
products. Using Ovako steel in the CV spline is one of those
ways.”
Ovako Sweden AB, SE-712 80 Hällefors, Sweden Phone: +46 591 60 000
www.ovako.com
BA/HE-01 GB 15:06 ©Ovako 2015
The proposal from Ovako was timely. Rehak, who was already
considering other options due to the quality and availability
problems, decided to try the unfamiliar steel from the distant
country of Sweden. After some tweaking, he was pleasantly
surprised at the product’s resilience.