Pinto Car Club of America

anyone heard of an aluminum driveshaft fron an awd aerostar (reardriveshaft) swap into a pinto?

My turbo car came with one.  There are two styles, the early ones have pressed in ends.  The later ones, 96 and 97, have welded ends.  These are more desirable to the foxbody Mustang croud as they are stronger and are a direct bolt in.  The early ones are supposedly easy to shorten.  You just pop an end out, shorten the DS to the desired length, and then press the end back in.  That is what my friend did for my Pinto.  He later had the ends tack welded to make sure they did not spin.  Unfortunely I do not know what ujoints he used.
I have not had the DS out on my 73 yet so I cannot tell you guys what the weight difference would be on a Pinto but I can tell you what I found when I did the swap on my Saleen.  The original Saleen DS weighed 15 lbs assembled, with yoke and axle flange.  The AWD aerostar DS weighed 7 lbs assembled with the Mustang yoke and axle flange.  I supposedly could have bolted in the Aerostar DS as is but the Aerostar yoke and axle flange were much bigger so I swapped them so save some additional weight.  I did notice a difference in the way it accelerated with the aluminum DS.  I believe I paid $32 for the DS and another $18 for ujoints. 
Make sure you take a good look at the DS before you pull it from the van as they are usually damaged from the forks from the front loader.  I looked under a number of vans before I found one with no scrapes.