The 2 piece drive shaft is just to reduce driveline vibration on our luxurious sport cars. Cant have vibes splashing our coffee everywhere! It also helps to distribute the load better across the extra u-joints, resulting in joints that seem to last nearly forever. A 1 piece shaft is definitely more suitable for racing, you probably wont notice a difference since you're thrashing the car anyway. Aluminum should be fine for an n/a engine. If it were making big power, I would stay with steel. I've driven supras with 1 piece and 2 piece shafts and felt a definite difference in vibrations at certain speeds but nothing terrible.
If you stay within the angles hilux has posted and use a well balanced driveshaft, you may not even notice a difference.
If you decide to keep your stock shafts and end up trashing the support bearing, I've learned that a 92 Ford Ranger (2WD 3.0L) uses a nearly identical bearing at a 3rd of the price.
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