Shorten A Steering Shaft?

This is the steering shaft on the willys...its a 2-piece shaft with slip joint, with the female end (right in the pic) going to the saggy box, and the male end with the rubber bump stop (on the left) going to the u-joint that connects to the column. Even with the 2 pieces completely pushed together, its not quite short enough - dropping the column an inch or two further down into the engine bay to allow the steering shaft to stay below the engine mount - but that also means the shaft needs to be a bit shorter and its run out of travel).



Wondering what is the best way to shorten it - if that is even possible to do safely. The male end that has the ujoint on it is splined, so cutting that end doesn't work unless I can find someone to respline it....or I guess I could cut the splines off, grind some flats to make a double D, and then use a different ujoint that would fit both ends. I was also wondering if I could do something at the slip joint to shorten it?

 

Not sure those plugs or pins are nylon...seems like I should install replacement pins afterwards - can I drive in a steel roll pin or the like?

 

Okay - a few points to clarify:
1) the inner double D shaft is fixed inside the shaft on the right (and guessing that is what two pin do)...
2) the left side shaft is the female shaft and moves slides over the inner shaft - I had this backward in the first post....

So is there any way to pull the inner shaft out of the slip side (not the pinned side)? If I could get the inner shaft to pull out, I could cut the outer shaft a bit shorter, but I'd probably also cut off whatever is the end stop on that as well as the fancy little spring clip retaining indentation. You can see there is a groove or something nearing the end of the inner shaft on the left up against the outer shaft


You guys probably already had jumped to the only way to separate the shafts is to drill the pins and let the inner shaft come out with the left side...guess that just seemed odd to me as inner shaft is not fixed in the left side.

Anyway, just to make sure I understand, if I drill out the pins on the right side, the inner shaft will slide out....I then can cut some of the end off the inner shaft as well as cut some of the outer shaft on the right. Currently, what is limiting travel is the outer shaft coming together and compressing the rubber stopper. I would guess the inner shaft is also running out of room, but I know the outer shaft is, so need to shorten them both.

A couple of tangentially related questions:
1) Does any know where I can buy a double ujoint that is 1"x48spline on BOTH ends? If I cannot get the right u-joint, it may not matter whether I can shorten it or not.
2) This steering box end of the shaft connects to the box via a rag joint....what do people think of those (some seem to hate them in terms of durability, but I have no experience)? The rag joint would seem to help with vibrations dampening, but won't like as much 'angle' in the joint? The PO set it up pretty nicely with the steering shaft and the spud shaft on the box in pretty good alignment (part of the reason the nose of the box is tipped down I guess), but as I need to route the steering shaft more horizontal and will not be remounting the box to make the spud shaft more horizontal, the rag joint accommodate some angle. I guess its possible to remove the rag joint and replace with a u-joint, but would probably also combine with a new steering shaft as the spud shaft is 13/16x36spline, and the replacement ujoints for that seem to only go to double D or round steering shafts (not 48spline).

These hyrbid ujoints add up in price quick (if I can even find the right ones)....Makes you seriously consider replacing the column and shaft all the way to the box using standard double D stuff...wouldn't be that much more expensive and more flexible for future changes....