First it was the lightning last week that took out my headlights, now the truck is at the dealership after trying to come home today. I was coming to a stop at a light when I hear a faint POP from under the truck. Didn't thing anything about it so I went to take off. Whack...ting, ting, ting? My driveshaft was laying on the side of the road while holding up traffic. I put it in 4wheel just to pull off the road didn't have a clue as to how this one happened. While waiting for the towtruck, I investigated the joint to find a little bit of orange on some of the broken surface. I think that this has been awhile coming assuming it was an older stress fracture. I have no idea when that could have happened. Could it just be my luck with a defective joint? I'll see what the dealer has to say about it in the morning.

 

Where did it snap. Thats a shame your rear driveshaft snapped, where exactly did it snap at. Can you get a pic of the snap? Was it a clean snap straight in half or was it angled or jagged in any way? Dave (kickassfx4)'s front driveshaft snapped @ Pismo beach, hopefully his rear doesn't go out this next Pismo meet :P It's July 8th and 9th btw! If you live in Cali let me know if you're interested in going!

 

It came apart at the rear on the half yolk on the driveshaft end, if that makes sense. I did not have the camera with me at the time, and the last guy at the shop this evening said that it would be the first vehicle worked on. I will try to get a photo of the broken yolk when I pick it up tomorrow. The more I think about it, the more I say it was just a flawed part. Since I have owned this truck (1 yr), I have not beat on it one bit. I have had to off road a few times on some hunting trips, but that would not have caused this. It looked like to me that one side only had a little bit left before it broke through, so it just let go completely when I tried to take off. The funny part was hearing the pop when I was slowing down.

Edit: I'm about 1100 miles away in Colorado, so that would be some trip. That's for the offer, though.

 

Truck is fixed with a new driveshaft. Unfortunately, they had already boxed the old one up to be sent to the engineers (not sure why) for inspection, so no pictures. The tech did say that this is very unusual and was probably just a bad U-joint. I guess that I was lucky that I was stopped.

 

Glad they fixed it. I had a past girlfriend that happen to in her Jeep doing 30mph and flipped her front over back. Drive shaft dug right into the pavement. Lucky she had her seat belt on.

 

Didn't they bust this on mythbusters? I would certainly think that dshaft would crush under the weight and then hop over the bump.

 

That's where I saw it. They even set it up do reproduce this event with little success.

 

I got the call and went to the accident. Sure enough her 87 jeep wrangler was on its side.

 

What kind of car/truck did they try it with?

 

I think that it was a late 80's Monte Carlo. Something very similar, anyway. They lined it up with a hole in the pavement and pulled it up to speed using a cable/pulley. They never did get it to flip the rear end up in the air, but gave it a probable status.

 

I was just reading about it on the internet, They said it took 2 days and it got up about 2ft. My ex had stock jeep (lease). It was totaled out. A Monte Carlo has a lot lower center of gravity.

 

It must have came out and jammed itself in the perfect hole because as soon as your driveshaft snaps you will have absolutely no power, and you'll hear the damn thing bouncing. She must have been going pretty fast and coasted for a while with no power, the chance you're driveshaft is going to find a hole in the road with the ability to flip you is pretty rare. This is highly unlikely to happen to you if you have a brain.

 

Snap count is 6. Isn't the limit like 5?

 

I dont think it was a monte carlo.

I think they tried it with an old crown vic that they got cheap from a poilce auction. They were trying to prove that if a cable was wrapped around an axle that the force would rip the axle out from underneath, like in American Graffiti and Gone in 60 seconds.

Or is the myth im thinking of and the ones yall are talking about 2 differnt ones?

 

Yeah, you are right, the car was an old police cruiser.