Hard to imagine, but we were only 50 miles or so from disaster coming home from vacation and the 2010 IDI Weekend.
Matthias called me last Saturday morning as he was on his way to do some volunteer work and described to me what sounded like a major drivetrain malfunction. My first though was that the lucky mod came apart. I would need to get a trailer and go get the Night Moose. Upon arrival a couple hours later, I got under the truck and asked him to crank it. The truck has never had an inspection plate, so the flywheel was easy to see. All the lucky mod bolts were intact. As he spun it, it made a weird sound, almost like a dynamo or something, the flywheel turned and things "looked" normal, but he complained of a soft clutch pedal. I opened the hood and had him crank it again. This time, I heard the noise, but NOTHING WAS MOVING up front!
Holy kaniption fit batman! This was the first time I thought about having a broken crank. I prayed it was the flywheel bolts, but I couldn't figure why that would be. We used new bolts, and torqued them to spec. Half a day later, we had the trans off, and this is what we saw....
Yup. The flywheel just came off with the ZF. Sheared all 9.
Well that was a relief sort of. It would take us the rest of the afternoon and evening to get the broken pieces drilled and EZ outted. Just when the end was in sight, we lost the dang tang and spring putting the top cover back on the trans, and ended up draining it, pulling it, rolling it around on the floor and beating it sensless untill the 2 errant parts fell out. By then it was time to call it a night. We made attempt #2 to put the trans back in the next day, and got it buttoned up. Whew.....
Matthias called me last Saturday morning as he was on his way to do some volunteer work and described to me what sounded like a major drivetrain malfunction. My first though was that the lucky mod came apart. I would need to get a trailer and go get the Night Moose. Upon arrival a couple hours later, I got under the truck and asked him to crank it. The truck has never had an inspection plate, so the flywheel was easy to see. All the lucky mod bolts were intact. As he spun it, it made a weird sound, almost like a dynamo or something, the flywheel turned and things "looked" normal, but he complained of a soft clutch pedal. I opened the hood and had him crank it again. This time, I heard the noise, but NOTHING WAS MOVING up front!
Holy kaniption fit batman! This was the first time I thought about having a broken crank. I prayed it was the flywheel bolts, but I couldn't figure why that would be. We used new bolts, and torqued them to spec. Half a day later, we had the trans off, and this is what we saw....
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Yup. The flywheel just came off with the ZF. Sheared all 9.
Well that was a relief sort of. It would take us the rest of the afternoon and evening to get the broken pieces drilled and EZ outted. Just when the end was in sight, we lost the dang tang and spring putting the top cover back on the trans, and ended up draining it, pulling it, rolling it around on the floor and beating it sensless untill the 2 errant parts fell out. By then it was time to call it a night. We made attempt #2 to put the trans back in the next day, and got it buttoned up. Whew.....
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Those were Motorcraft bolts, and I'm pretty sure they were new although to be honest, I can't quite remember as it was a couple years ago now. We swapped a C6 off that motor for the ZF that he bought from EZ, and I'm thinking that we had several spent DMF's around, but probably no crank bolts for them. New bolts come with smooge on the threads, so I would not have used any locktite on them, but I did this time! Spent $25 on a bottle of the blue locktite and smooged the threads of some used bolts we had on hand (since aquired from an unknown member, but they are identical factory bolts). We torqued them to 42 foot pounds, even though my book calls for 38. Now, since Gary mentioned a higher value, I will say that I was going by the 6.9 book, and I realize those bolts are shorter, but I would think the torque value of a bolt is based more on it's diameter than its lenght. My current theory on where we failed originally, is that I probably forgot to lube up the head. I may have torqued it dry to the specified 38 foot pounds. Good to know that it took 2 years and almost 10,000 miles to fail. 
I'm just thankfull that this didn't happen on I-80 in that torential downpour we drove home from the rally in. 
Praise be to God. 
