Axles twisting

[Rory McNeil]

When I pulled the axles out of my bracket car for a gear change the other day, I noticed a slight twist at the splines of both axles. These are 35 spline Strange Engineering axles, in a Dana 60 rear end.The amount of twist is fairly small, less than 1 spline, but I was wondering how much these axles can twist before breaking? I have broken several stock axles in various vehicles over the years, but I would imagine that a race axle would be more "elastic" than a factory axle. I remember reading in a magazine years ago about running an axle until they twisted 1/2 a turn, but I`ve never seen any axle go anywhere near that far without snapping first.