you guys ever fling a driveshaft while driving down the road??

the drive shaft loop thread got me to remembering my drive shaft toss I did in my OT car way back when I was young and handsome.

going to a swap meet at 6:00 AM following my buddy in his 40 ford. he made the light and got on the freeway ahead of me. light turns green and I'm off to the races! got up to about 90MPH when I get a vibration so I let off the gas and BOOM! driveshaft hits the floor and goes flying... I see it in my rear view mirror with a nice bend to it and about 10 feet in the air.

it's amazing how far a car will coast with no driveshaft... I coasted off to the next exit and pulled over.

not exactly sure what broke but the yoke was still in the transmission and the rear u-joint cups were still bolted to the rear. I found out later that the 4 mounting ears on my 4-speed cracked and leaked out all the trans gear lube and the trans blew a while later. I removed it without even unbolting it from the bellhousing.

that's my driveshaft story.

 

regarding the handsome part............

 

I did once on an OT van. It made a racket but was uneventful. I had a spare ujoint (front) and changed it there on the road.

 

Yes, 1968, in a 64 Malibu SS. I had the clutch out a few months earlier, dropped the u-joint lockwashers in the dirt and figured I don't need them

I was 40 miles from home, I couldn't find one missing u-joint cap along the road, so I stuffed some spare 5/16" bolts around the u-joint u-bolt to get me home. It vibrated like crazy.

 

Denise...I don't think even if i had pics you want to see them, cause i was drag racing an old truck on the street and lost the drveshaft, got lodged underneath somewhere and sent the back-end of my truck about 2 feet in the air, but felt like 10 feet and I made a mess in my pants.

 

Was on my way up to Laramie, Wy for school in my OT Trans Am. There is this one stretch of road where its two lanes going north and flat for miles. I'm cruising along at about 60 when this hot (i think) '70 Cuda blows by. Not to be out done I drop her down to 4th and get on it wind her up and shift back into 5th. Wind it up a bit more and I'm doing about 135 when I pass him. By that point the cars starting to shake pretty bad but I just thought it was just a tire out of balance. I get about half a car length in front of him and BAM the whole car shutters and the motor his the rev limiter. I pull over to inspect the damage. Several wholes in the rear of the floor pan, trans case is split open and draining fluid all over the road and the bellhousing is split in half. Had to walk a quarter mile back the way I came to find what was left of the driveshaft. Guess I got lucky

 

49RatFink: LOL. Young and handsome. That's what my wife said about ME . . . ALONG TIME AGO, IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY.

F&J: Man, did my dad train you, too, like he trained me? He wasn't one to stick out his thumb and ask for help. If osmething went haywire, he held the flashlight in his mouth if he had to and FOUND osmething onboard to limp home -- no matter if it was noisy as hell. (Then, he still had to get the trouble light FIX it right so he could get to WORK the next day.) He made me tougher.

 

i never have but i watched a guy snap one at the street races one night in a ford lighting. he was doing a power brake with a group of people around him. lucky no one got hurt

 

Yeah, one time. I had a '55 Chevy Cameo I had bought for the princely sum of $200.00...yes, two hundred bucks, in 1987. Had it towed to the front end shop to have new kingpins put in it. Went to drive it home, and the driveshaft fell right out of it in front of the shop! I was just pulling onto the street when it happened. Pushed it right back and had some u-joints put in it, and I drove the hell out of that truck for another two years before stupidly trading it off to a buddy for a car and a truck.

 

I know what I am doing today, fabing up a drive shaft loop

 

I had a new SS350 Camaro 1970, 4speed, posi, Inglewood positraction tires. made a slow U turn pushed in the clutch, reved it up and dumped the clutch. rear u-joint let go. walked to parts store got new joint, used someones vice. layed under car and fixed it. It was in a classy residential neighbor hood. The mans house I was broke down in front of came out to talk to me. didn't see me melting tires, asked innocently thats a new car, how did it break drive shaft? Me 20 years old at the time said I don't know must of been a defect.



Ago

 

I've had some damn noisy U-joints on stuff (usually sme new acquisition I hadn't the chance to get to "all systems" yet on, ya know?). I never had a drive shaft fall off, BUT I knew a guy with a '55 Chvy he dearly loved. He was goin' "a little over the speed limit on the WV Turnpike back in the early '70s and had his drive shaft break and fall off. Thank God for momentum (and the fact it didn't drop off at FRONT!).

I asked him what happened. He said he'd had to have a shaft shortened and, apparently, whoever did it (1) didn't know welding and/or (2) didn't know how to keep the parts in alignment when initially tacking it. 'cause it broke, and the dude I was talking to said it was NOT vibrating when it went.

I have HEARD a story or two about driveshafts dropping at the front and actually overturning the car. BAD NEWS!

 

Ooohhh...I got a good one!!
Around 1986,I was driving for a small Trucking Co. I was going Northbound on Hwy 101 past Moffett Field(Mountain View CA area for those outside the Bay Area) in a 24' Bobtail.
I'm just cruising along at 60mph when the shifter drops straight to the floor and I start slowing down.
I coast to the shoulder,get the truck stopped and get out to see what's wrong.
I look under the truck,the transmission is "hanging" from the shifter,it's broken off the bellhousing,and BOTH (2 piece) driveshafts are MISSING!
I look up and down the highway,around the truck and off the side of the road.
They were nowhere to be seen!
I can only imagine what 2 truck driveshafts looked like "cartwheeling" down the Highway!
When the Tow truck driver showed up,he just stood and stared at the trans hanging there....

 

In a 74 Plymouth fury loud sound car did a lil 1 foot leap into the air lotta noise enegine reving,,Thought I got hit,,front U broke ,,quite a mess

was told I was lucky it was'nt worse

 

I watched from 8 car lengths back as a long bed Chevy pickup lost it's front u-joint. Seemed odd how the shaft floated a little bit before the shit hit the fan. No flipped truck, but the shaft got screwed.
I built a pair of replacement driveshafts for a Mack heavy haul semi tractor that had a odd failure. One of the chains attached to the headache rack behind the cab dropped and wrapped around the shaft. It tightened, causing driveshafts and all the powertrain parts to come to a sudden stop at 60 mph. The tubing was 4 1/2" outside, .259" thick, SNAPPED. 8" wide u-joint yokes twisted, binding up the u-joints. Had to replace them completely. Not rod stuff, but a story.
I've seen hundreds of driveshafts damaged by u-joint failures and neglect.

 

ooh i love storytime.

it happened to me in my (OT) '67 Cougar, which had a pretty stout 392 stroker. My dad had a mechanic buddy who put the whole drivetrain in for me, and it had a pretty good vibration from day one. I brought it back for him to check it out. He told me to "get in" and promptly took the car up to 120 or so (i think he was mad). Just as the thought crossed my mind that it could be a u-joint, BOOM! ... the biggest racket ever, i thought it was the end of the world. The engine hit the 7000rpm rev limiter and then died because the shaft took out the gas and brake lines and slapped the tailstock of the tranny clean OFF. Luckily it was a LONG straight stretch and we finally coasted to a stop with no brakes. The car was so full of dust that i could barely breathe and the rearview mirror was all cockeyed. It was that violent.

dad's buddy had a good laugh about it (i didn't). There was a huge pool of various fluids under the car, and some lady came by in a minivan and said "i think you lost a piece of your car way back there". The mechanic went good on the parts and labor, but it messed the floors up pretty good. I put a loop in after that... I don't think i'd ever go without one again.

 

this is a little off subject but, the journey carpenter [country boy] that i worked under when i was an apprentice related this story to me. paul [carpenter] and his brother ernest took ernest`s flat bed truck down to the river bed and shoveled a load of gravel on the truck to spread on the driveway at home. the truck had a two speed rear axle and on the way home,paul not knowing what the knob under the dash was, asked ernest "what does that knob do". ernest was eager to show paul and pushed in the clutch pedal, pulled the knob and released the clutch pedal [while driving down the hi-way at fifty miles an hour with a FULL load of gravel on the truck]. thr result was that the sudden strain on the drive train [going from hi-speed to low-speed fully loaded at fifty M.P.H.] tore the front spring perches on the rear axle completly off the truck chassis, the rear axle was still attached to the truck by the spring shackels and the axle was hanging out the back of the truck.

 

Yeah, back when I was in the Navy I had a '69 GTO that I could NOT keep U-Joints in. I'd buy them 2-3 at a time and always had a spare in the glove box. I got where I could change one out in just a couple of minutes.

Luckily it was always the rear that broke. Turns out I had a bad tranny mount that was causing them to go bad. Changed out the mount and never had another problem.

 

Yep. 420 hp small block in a 2wd S10 Blazer. Way to fuckin' low. Didn't much care about pinion angle. What sucks the most is it busted the 'shaft at about 20mph when I wasn't even on it hard. Young and stupid. Now I'm much older....and stupid.

 

Yep,and I got paid while doing it!

I tossed the driveshaft in a 36,000 lb fire engine a few months ago. It made a heck of a racket and tore up one of the air tanks.

 

Sweet!! BTW....thanks for doing one of the jobs I would never want. We all need more firemen.

 

No...but I dropped the fuel tank out of my 78' continental once....
Whole lotta sparks at 80 m.p.h.!!!

 

And this is WHY I started the driveshaft loop thread you speak of!!

 

When my sister had an '88 Chevy pickup, she managed to drop one. Low speed, pulling away from a light it just fell off. But my sister is the type to drive with bad rear brakes on her current car that I said to have looked at a year ago, she finally gets looked at a couple weeks ago and they're metal on metal, one wheel cylinder frozen up completely, they had to replace everything on both sides. So she probably was lucky.

I came close, but once I figured out I needed a U-joint, I replaced it.

 

I had the rear U-Bolts come loose on my '40 Willys sedan on the way to a Street Rod Nationals back in the mid 80's Coasted to the side of the highway, retreived the shaft, and walked across the street to a NAPA parts store. Had the new joint installed and back in the car in less than a half hour.
Better to be lucky than good some days!

 

Re: you guys ever fling a driveshaft while driving down the road??



No but i've changed out U-joints that made me pucker up before... and rode with a friend in an old K5 Blazer that wanted me to check out this thumping noise... the front u-joint was missing all but one of the caps and was literally rattling around inside the yoke. This was after we went to lunch down I-35 at 70mph.
<O</O

Now has anyone here had a radius arm pull out of a twin I-beam F100's frame pocket at 100mph?<O></O>
<O</O

I have.

Now THAT was a wild ride down a county road...
<O</O

I bought a '67 F100 SWB with 352 4V from a guy that said he was restoring the truck and had to sell it. Well he had tore down the front suspension... put it up for sale and put everything back under it finger tight. He must've lost a nut because the right radius arm didn't have one holding it to the radius arm frame pocket... nor did it have any washer or bushing.
<O</O

Crazy thing is the truck felt fairly solid until I hit a small pot hole.
<O</O

Yee haw.
<O</O

-Chris

 

I had a 63 Chevy wagon with a 64 vette engine in it back in 1969. Street racing Saturday Night I managed to break BOTH U joints on the 2/3 shift (Never would have thought that was possible) and the drive shaft went out to the right and thru the open door of a Stereo/Head shop on 1st street. This being our main cruise street it was amazing nobody on the sidewalk, the parking lot or in the Head shop got hit. Took me a while to live that one down as EVERYBODY saw it.

Buddy of mine busted the front U joint on his Falcon and the driveshaft caught a crack or hole in the road and pole vaulted the rear of the car so high the car skidded on the front bumper. He hit the brakes so hard when it looked like we were going over that he bent the brake pedal.

Ya, driveshaft loops and heavy duty U joints installed in the right direction get my vote!

 

Of course! All the best people have thrown a drive shaft now and then

I coasted to a stop in some bad area and looked for my driveshaft with a flashlight as I waited for AAA..then the po-po rolled up on me because they'd gotten a call someone was breaking into cars! hahaha they were totally cool though , the wrecker was loading my car by then and it was pretty obvious what the situation was

 

Yup , I threw one at about 105mph in my 82'swb chevy. It scared the absolute shit out of me ,not only did it trash my exhaust on it's way out it also shattered the bellhousing on my trans.(700r4). Fortunately I didn't wreck and no one was behind me when it happened.

 

I lost the driveshaft out of the 48 about 15 years ago. My buddy could barely get his wrecker hooked to the truck he was laughing so hard at me. I ended up having to build a new one after that.
I watched a guy pitch one out from under his pickup after he passed me one day and luckily he was far enough ahead of me then that I didn't have to dodge the thing. It beat the bottom of his truck up pretty bad though and the driveshaft was toast.
I think that at about half the drag races I have ever been to someone has lost one at the starting line. At least one in the burnout box.