The distortion of cold forged shafts from the material 20MnCr5 (AISI 5120) after the heat treatment processes stress relieving and case hardening was studied experimentally. Besides the influence of the degree of deformation and the lubricant of the blanks also different initial states of the 20MnCr5, spheroidize annealed and ferritic-pearlitic microstructure, were analyzed. All investigated shafts after the stress relieving showed the same behavior, a decrease of the extruded diameter and an increase of tine length. The case hardening leads to an increase of all shaft dimensions. The effect of the different forging parameters and microstructures on the stress reliving process was relatively small. After case hardening shafts from the two initial states had different change in diameter and length, which indicates an anisotropic size change of ferritic-pearlitic shafts.