Last week or so I have been getting a vibration from the direveline at highway speeds. From experience, it seemed like u-joints. Whenever I lifted the throttle it subsided, The faster I got the more noticable the vibration. Today, I replaced both rear driveshft u-joints. One was OK, the other was dry. I thought good, that's probably my troubles. Got everything back together took it for a ride. Got out to the end of our rode and hit 55 mph and .....boom. After stopping immediaty, I thought I forgot to tighten somthing. I looked under the truck and saw the tailshaft snapped in half right in front of the transfer case. I could not believe my eyes. Both new u-joints were intact, nothing wrong with them. The trans just broke. Transfer case was hanging on the crossmember. The front u-joint on the rear shaft was not even broken, the cap was just spit out.

Looking back on the whole picture, I remembered that during the u-joint change that I had taken both yokes off and did not keep track of what end of the diveshaft was at the trans and what end at the diff. I looked hard and saw no difference in the drivshaft from one end to the other. Both ends were symmetrical and had weights for balancing. I did my best to put yokes on what I thought were the correct ends of the driveshaft.

OK, my question is...could potentially having the driveshaft ends flipped cause thaetailshaft to split?? Maybe the trans was going to explode regardless, but I am second guessing myself.
One more thing. The output shaft on the trans and the input of transfer case look fine Seems like the housing just failed.

I have a couple pics in a later post

Please discuss and give me opinions on what may or may not have caused this. Thanks guys.

 

Just curious did you notice if the vibration was gone on your first run up to speed?

As for the tail shaft housing to break there had to be a flaw in the casting. I doubt flipping the shaft would have done that.

 

Yea, not really any vibration until the explosion. I had been driving 35-45 MHP to get to that main rode. Did not really feal anything out of the ordinary up until that time.

I really didn't think that that driveshat had anything to do with it myself, but just wanted to get confirmation/opinions from some other fellows.
Never had this experience before, so I am kind of shocked and bewildered!!

 

Was it the OD housing of the trans that broke or the trans to t-case adapter that broke? Been a few OD housings that have cracked and failed, and a few adpaters that failed also.

 

It was the very end of the trans. The studs/bolts of the transfercase were still intact and attatched to what was left of the ccase. I'll try to get pics up tomorrow.
The truck is an '03 and has 88k. Anyone think that I will have any luck with Dodge covering anything? Or am I on my own??

 

Yeah I have read of a few of these happening. While Chrysler "should" step up and fix this issue, I doubt they will. It doesn't hurt to ask though.

 

I'm willing to bet that Dodge will not fix it under warranty. Your signature says you have a lift and bigger tires. Unless the dealer installed it and blessed it they are probably going to deny your claim and blame those components. I'm not taking their side, but we all know how the dealerships work.

Marshall

 

Here's are some pics guys.

DISCUSS.....

 

thats pretty wild!

 

I would say a flaw in the casting. If the u-joints you replaced were in pretty good shape, there could not have been that kind of damage started before you replaced them. I do not think flipping the D-shaft would cause any problem. Even if it would, it would not happen on the first run out.

 

Here is an interesting quote from the Georand trans. site. It is in the warranty section.

Cracked cases of any kind are not covered. If a universal joint in the drive shaft is loose or over tight it can cause a vibration that can crack the overdrive section of the transmission case.


I don't want to believe that a simple u-joiny change could have cause my misfortune.

 

I have a 03 QC short box and before I installed a gearvendors splitter the driveshaft had a vibration dampener on the transfercase end of the driveshaft so I don't see how you could flip the driveshaft end to end without knowing it. When I installed my gearvendors I had a shorter driveshaft made.
Jim O

 

When I removed both the slip yoke from the tcase end and then the flange from the pumkin side,the driveshaft looked the same from end to end. There were weights on either end of the shaft, but no markings and or way to tell what end was what.

 

What is the red wire going to? It does not look factory.

 

I had the same thing happen last night. I had a garage replace all 3 u-joints on rear shaft and first time I had it up to highway speed, heard a loud bang, instant bad vibration, looked in rear view mirror and saw tranny fluid all over. When i stopped and crawled under, housing was split and a cap was gone on front u-joint. I am thinking a clip wasnt put in right and when it blew the cap, the vibration snapped the case. Going back to garage this morning to have a chat. Wish me luck.