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Got about an hour away from home when there was a BANG! and smoke and no more go. Pinion shaft was laying on the road smoldering and there were flames coming out of the now open pinion hole. I was pulling our old 32' 5er, so there was a fire extinguisher handy. Pulled the driveshaft, locked the front hubs and got her too a parking area. Decided to try to make it home since I was still mobile. 500 yards later, what was left of my differential grabbed and left me skidding along the pavement. Pulled the axle shafts and slowly backed into somebody's lane. Got towed home (camper too) ending a fun filled day at midnight. Pulled my spare axle out from under my garbage trailer this morning and she's ready to hit the road again as soon as my fresh brake shoes arrive.
I'll try to get some pics. A small chunk out of the carrier, no missing teeth or even even gouges in the ring gear and spider gears. Hole in the bottom of the case and pinion shaft looks like somebody did a really sloppy job of cutting it in half with a plasma torch.
Still love my truck, but I'm just a little shaken.
You might be right Chris. There was enough oil in it to produce a big flame and a fair patch on the road. That being said, it still may have been low. I did have a slow leak. I got some pics, but will have to wait until i can get better signal t upload them. I think I'll pull the carrier tomorrow (when it's cooler outside) and have a better look at the carnage.
Nate, I have no idea how many miles on that axle. It came with the dually bed I bought when I first got my rig. The rest of the truck has 150K miles. I traded the original one off the truck for some fab work when I did the 4x4 conversion, 'cause I was too cheap to swap the gears in the front axle.
Looks to me like the pinion bearing went out then heated the pinion up red hot until it just let go. My guess is that if you could get that pinion gear out of there you could probably still spin the carrier.
Hey, you could probably fix that and sell it on Craig's List!!
You nailed it Nate. I pulled the carrier out and sure enough, everything points to the pinion bearing. I'll snap a few pics of the pinion gear tomorrow. It's pretty special.
Update: Wife got home with the new brake shoes, and other than bleeding the brakes, I'm back in business.
There ya go. What's left of my pinion shaft. That's one heck of a chunk of steel to melt twist off like that. About a mile before it happened, I felt a slight shudder, like I was loosing an injector or something. No weird noises (that I heard anyway) until she blew.
Last edited by Fullcrew7.3; Jul 9, 2012 at 08:46 PM.
Reason: wrong picture