joesw31

.

oldcutlass

Which part failed, front or rear? That's a lot of destruction.

Fun71

Wow, that's nasty. I once had the cap on a factory u-joint come off (front joint as well) but the driveshaft stayed in place so no carnage.

Was this an inside clip or an outside clip?
And how would a clip fail?
If it came off completely, perhaps it was not fully seated in the groove?

oldcutlass

I had a U-joint fail pulling a hole shot and but it was the U-joint itself. The yoke got destroyed.

droldsmorland

GD nice destruction! Nicely done sir! That fully sux! Spicer solid joints, period. I learned the hard way as well(is there any other way). The solids have not failed in many cars (or Trucks) in many years.

Octania

Spectacular
No injuries then, just stained upholstery?

MDchanic

Holy crap.

- Eric

Hairy Olds

Spectacular indeed!

seansolds

That looks like there was no slack between the diff yolk and trans yolk. Under torque the rearend would have pushed the main shaft out the case! Just saying. The 400 shaft is different length then the standard shaft? I think it's different in size and length even in my year olds.

mrhotrod

hmm that looks pretty bad, lucky you didn't get slammed by the shifter. I busted a bunch of muncie's but you did a real good one there. I am thinking you had a drive shaft bottoming on the trans to break it way up front like that. as you said the joints were installed correctly I have read enough of your posts to know you can surely handle that so.. I also have never seen a clip fail that wasn't improperly seated, so we are looking at another cause and binding makes the most sense in this case.

wr1970

I would like to know would a loop prevents this? Maybe a dumb question! I would have thought the tail case would have broke first! Looks like the reason was something in the case was binding and caused the u joint to fail also.

mrhotrod

a loop would make no difference here other than to control the driveshaft and prevent it from locking the rear up or flipping the car. and I suspect he has one on here or there would be more damage from doing this at 45 mph.

Fun71

So how did you determine it was the u-joint (or the u-joint clip) that failed?
I work in failure analysis so my I'm always curious to know how and why these things happen.

mrhotrod

I know a guy that broke a front joint at the track, he had a loop but it still beat the crap out of the floorboard and that's when I found out mounting your fire extinguisher on the floor by next to your seat is a real bad idea lmao.. he had his there and the force of the driveshaft hitting the floor knocked the fire extinguisher out of the clamp and it emptied itself all over inside his car.. it was funny because he didn't get hurt other than his pride.
Joe, did your floor get beat very badly? and do you remember the brand of joint you had there just so we all know ..

johnnyjaws

man that sucks

mrhotrod

that's good, very lucky there.. I will not be using that stuff for sure. last ones I bought were Spicer units though, no problems with those as of yet.

Fun71

Medical electronics. We do electrical FA on all types of electronic components and circuits, plus physical FA on the mechanical system components (scanning electron microscope fractography, metallography, etc). You name it, we do it - from the system level down to the IC transistor level.

Most folks in the Jeep community recommend Spicer joints as they seem to hold up better than the other brands, especialy the HD non-greasable ones that don't have cross-drilled grease passages.

With that said, I have Precision HD greasable joints in all locations on my Jeep Wrangler (7 total) and they have held up for several years of rock crawling and general off-road 4WD use. There's always the possibility of a bad part, or even what used to be a good brand going downhill (we've seen that in almost everything automotive).