Let’s see some carnage; the thread of shame!

[57taskforce]

My inner destructive self wants to see broke parts, a little too much throttle here; probably should have had a front dana 60 there, etc. This picture didn’t come from a GM truck but it belongs on the wall of shame and is a bit thought provoking on just how it didn’t drop the valve head into the cylinder. So what have you guys broke on the trail or dropping chains on asphalt?

[jeffahart]

Here's one for you, on my front dana60. Bye bye steering, just flat scary!

[mongocanfly]

no pics of it Jeff...but i had the steering wheel pop off the shaft one time..the nut that held it on vibrated loose.... also scary

[jeffahart]

In the spirit of paranoia, I replaced my tie rod at the same time. But funny you mention steering wheel nut. I had been paranoid about my wooden grant steering wheel. The cheesy, easily stipped, aluminum adapter that holds the wheel on with three little bolts always gave me pause. A couple weeks after the drag link fix, I bought a 15” re-pop. Last year I had a run of bad luck with the truck. One of the freeze plugs rusted out and leaked too badly to ignore and had to be replaced…. You guessed it, one of the plugs behind the flywheel. What a job… for a .99 cent freeze plug. A two day project for lazy old buzzard like me. Gotta love it.

[Zoomad75]

From our 2018 Desert trip. All I was trying to do was position my truck in the sand near Lake Powell and snapped the driver-side u-joint. All I had to do was put it in reverse and tip into the throttle. SNAP!


Passenger side stub snapped in a sandy wash coming down on the Eva Conover trail in Central Utah.



Here's the passenger side stub and long side shaft after making a pretty long way down the Flat Iron Mesa Trail south of Moab.



Before all the naysayers start screaming to get a D60, hold your horses a bit. There is a common thread through all the failures. Yes it all happened in Utah on three different trips but that's not it. Each time one broke I was backing up with lite to moderate throttle input. Between the automatic trans I had at the time and the tru-trac limited slip diff, myself and a few of my buddies have theorized it's the auto trans holding torque on the drivelines when the shift from drive to reverse happens. Add the tru-trac into the mix and the change in direction causes a quick release of torque that hammers the tire with the most traction. The result is the same. Snap.

I did one more trip to Utah with the old combo (5.3/auto). The terrain was similar, including the same trail I broke the passenger side outer on. I changed one thing in my process. If I got stuck I made sure to shift the trans to neutral and pause before going the other way. I did get hung up a couple of times and managed to do this without snapping a shaft.

I've had two solid trips with the 8.1/nv4500 combo and the first one was some solid rockcrawling in Moab. No break.


I'll get some Chrome-moly shafts to stuff in the D44 before getting a D60.

[special-K]

Dana 60s break, too.

how about a Dana44 ring & pinion destroyed along with a posi unit? And it wasn't even installed! All safely stored in a bucket with a tight lid inside a shed on a shelf. Safe, right?? The shed is a lean-to off of my barn. The lower end of the barn roof (cedar shakes) was leaking. It turns out the water would run down the rafter and drip onto the bucket lid. I guess the screw cap wasn't snug enough to seal water out. To my dismay, the day I opened up that bucket it was sitting full of rusty water. I had that diff stored many years. Made me a bit sick to find this