my drivelines & the devil chased me round

[ttman4]

Couple days earlier I sorta thought I heard/felt a really light vibration. Thought about crawling under to ck & grease the Ujoints, but decided it could wait. I didn't want to crawl round under there.....fat belly, lazy, & hadn't been feeling the best lately....mostly lazy!
Anyway, I was happily easing toward town other night minding my business. Going thru some construction area near edge of town & suddenly I started hearing & feeling those loud rub board roaring sounds like they put along edge of roads so you know you're asleep & running off the road.
Very quickly it flashed thru my mind "what he** they put those things here for?" Then just as fast it flashed "what he** they put'em out here in the middle of the road for? These da** idots anyway!!"

Just as fast as all that stuff flashed thru my mind, the roaring & nasty vibration quit! About .002 seconds later the loud ker-thumps & ker-bangs started, along with lots & lots of other nasty, heart chilling sounds, lots of sparks flying out from underneath. Couple of cars I was meeting hit the shoulder!
It's amazing how fast different thoughts flash thru one's mind...."I been bombed, nuked, drive line fix'in to poke me up thru the seat, I'm getting wrecked from bottom up, devil's after me...."

I think one of the strap bolts holding front ujoint musta come out. One bolt was gone, one loose, other 2 were still there & tight. Front driveline had come loose & dropped. ripped & mangled the carrier bearing. Slip joint had slipped out & rear drive line had dropped. Rear ujoints looked ok.

For all the scary, nasty, heartchilling & heart stopping sounds, I figured both drivelines would have been knotted & wrapped up in little-bitty knots! Along with all the "goodies" beat from under my truck....& big deep gouges & grooves dug in that new road!
Turned out the drive lines musta never connected with the pavement.

Anyway, hauled it home. Having new carrier bearing put on, new ujoints, & balance checked. Get'em all back Monday.

Come to think of it, Santa just left coal last time,...& time before. Wonder if this driveline deal is an omen? Sign of things to come....

 

[Dalvaras]

I have a regular cab long bed with a one piece shaft. 3 years ago the front u joint broke going 45 mph down the road. It left some nice gouges in the road but the shaft was fine.

So it 2:00am I am 14 miles from home and to broke to pay for a tow... after some thinking I figured out what I would do was to put the shaft back in place and wrap about half a roll of duct tape around it...thought that would at least get me close enough to home that I could walk there before I had to goto work the next morning.To my surprise it actually held all the way home. It had a horrible vibration if I tried to drive faster than about 25mph but I got home.

Duct tape never leave home without it!