So I was coming home from a friends house, taking a fast paced hjighway home, passed somebody and when i went to go back into the slow lane i felt a huge thud and looked behind me and just saw some big parts falling off the truck and alot of white smoke/steam. I stopped and looked underneath my truck only to find that my entire rear driveshaft was gone, the flange on the axle and transfercase are still there though. my gas tank looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger took a baseball bat to it. my gas lines coming from fuel pump are sheared and my trans cooling hoses are sheared. I'm not sure the cause of this as both the ujoints are brand new, but I have a good feeling it has alot to do with my old and tired transmission mount putting too much vibration on the ujoint and they failed. I consider myself lucky at the minimal amount of damage it did considering ive known ppl to have their driveshaft come off and go through the floor or cause a serious accident. Ive got some car part shopping to do but luckily itll be fixed soon. Ive got some pictures of the damage i just gotta upload them on here, ill get to it. the only part of it all that i was able to find was the front half of the driveshaft, the other 3 feet of driveshaft couldnt be found haha. not that this really has much to do with truck tech, i just wanted to say to let this be a lesson to you all that this can happen when your transmission mount gets old and tired,

 

Had this happen to me when i owned my old f150- changed the u joints out when i was a teen, was going down the highway and BOOM! Completely blew the tailshaft off the trans and put a huge dent in the floorboard. no fun.

 

Yea it was a good time, im just glad the truck didnt cause a huge accident and I can still drive it. I got some pictures gathered along with a couple I took during the retarded recovery process. The tow truck driver got his truck stuck as he proceeded to back up more so into the soft ditch instead of right up to my truck, so i watched him try and dig it out for an hour before he called out a 5 ton truck driven by his boss to pull him out. It was rediculous
This is the only part i was able to find and it was a half km away from my truck




Took a couple good swings at my muffler, gas tank and gas tank skid plate before flying off my truck into traffic behind me

Hard to tell, but both fuel lines are fubar along with one of the trans cooling lines

Crossmember took a couple swings aswell

My excellent tow truck driver and his 2wd ditch rover

 

Did you forget or not get the c clips installed??

Not use the correct bolts holding the flanges together??

China made ujoints??

I can`t see a poor or worn out transmission mount causing a failure like this the driveshaft being out of phase might be a cause .

You felt or heard nothing different then normal?

 

Same thing happened to me. Tore my exhaust off all the way.

 

C-clips were installed and original hardware was used so I'm baffled

 

You could've just crawled it home in 4x4 and saved that tow truck the embarrassment. Hahaha

 

What kind of U-joints? OEM or some other (china) brand.

That is a U-joint failure...nothing else. Somehow they were not put back together correctly.

 

Possibly, it looks like the yoke ear failed on the differential end (third pic from top), IMO. Did you crack or bend it when driving out or in the U-joint?

Doubtful the transmission mount played any role in this.

 

Third pic from the top i the t-case end, i havent taken a very close look at everything yet but theres a chance one of the ujoints failed, im off to find a used driveshaft after work today so hopefully i have luck, the gas lines and coolin hose will have to wait a day.

 

Sorry to say this guys..... I had a 1995 Jeep Wrangler 4.0 5spd.... I broke three driveshafts until I found my culprit. Now if anyone knows much about jeeps then you know that the older ones had a Slip Yoke. Well at high speeds my tranny intended to vibrate I guess causing me to bust my slip yoke. This was caused by a torn tranny mount... Now I am talking jeep to it may no comply to toyota lol

 

....looking back towards the rear diff where the ear appears sheared off possibly from the d-line flopping around or possibly the cause....hard to say.

 

ahh yes i saw that, the truck still isnt fixed, ive had a hell of a time tracking down a used drive shaft, but driving my little brothers rx7 to work lately hasnt been too bad haha. drive shaft should be in tomorrow, still thought it was over priced but compared to the dealerships price for a new one ($1300), i couldnt let it go. now i have to figure out the sheared gas lines and the cooling line issue, and while im at it i might aswell get the trans mount out of the way and i think it'll be back on the road, i guess ill find out if anything else was damaged when i try and drive it haha

 

You got extremely lucky that you didn't take out your transfer case..
you must have experienced some kind of vibration prior to this thing letting lose.
I think the joint at the pinion flange failed, elongated the slot and went from there..

Was the slip joint at the T/C or Pinion end of the shaft?

 

Don't blame the trans mount. This happened after replacing the ujoints? Hmmmm.....Lucky that no one got hurt.

 

ouch! I'm actually surprised at how little damage there is considering the forces involved...

Was there vibration leading up to the event? After this, I would change my seals on both tranny/transfer case outlet and differential... I'm pretty sure those would be damaged as well.

 

Ok well I got everything replaced, fuel lines, trans mount, used drive shaft, new ujoint, and yea your right about the pinion seal, its started leaking oil lol the transfer case however looks ok. Unfortunately I've come across another problem. While the truck is sitting at idle the entire truck shakes violently and just gets worse with higher revs. The truck itself drives and shifts fine but I dont really wanna go higher than 2000rpm because the shake is that bad lol. the shake wasn't there before this job so it's something I did. Could I have damaged something when I put the jack underneath the trans to do the mount? could it have something to do with the fuel lines?

 

although I don't think you can fully rule out hurting something if you jacked the tranny incorrectly it is a less likely cause...

I have a feeling the vibration you are experiencin gnow wasn't cause by the work you did, but by the original sympton (the drive-shaft breaking off at speed)

I'm no tranny expert though.. in fact I hate automatic transmissions. If mine goes bad, I'm installing manual!

hopefully someone here has an idea for your problem.

Sucks.

 

yea i figured that was the case because i only lifted it enough to slide the old mount out so i dont think i damaged anything doing that. I didn't think of the driveshaft busting off causing this problem but I suppose it makes sense, I just don't know what is damaged and I'm dreading taking it in to be diagnosed