Lifting my 97

[metalmacguyver]

1wd sucks.

 

[Sunk]

When you are supposed to have 4, yes. Details man....

 

[PaleBlue90]

1wd sucks.

just got a call from tim..

he is 5 hours from home, 2 states away.. and the truck is busted.

thats all i'm allowed to say.

oh man thats never good. whats the story?

 

[Sprag-O]

Tim... post the story!

I can only not tell for so long

 

[metalmacguyver]

Well, I had been looking forward to this trip to Maine for a while.



We left at about 1030 Thursday night, got there by 4:00 in the morning, got up at about 9:00 and went out to play a bit.

Stopped to take a look at some waterfalls.

Then a small water crossing.


And then after some more dirt roads, this happened.

I was feeling it out, trying to see if I could get any traction back, leaning out, looking at my rear tires, 4Low, engine at idle, I hear a *POP* and my driver side back tire stopped turning..........

Oh hell.

"Dude, I think I just snapped an axle shaft."

Um........ This side isn't turning either........


Oh crap.

I winch out of it, turn around and get back on the road. Pull the fill plug, turn the drive shaft and nothing moves...... Great. I snapped my pinion shaft.......

So we decide to head back but try to avoid that water crossing. We ended up getting into more trouble as a result.

We go down a snow covered hill and come to a dead end. We have to come back up it.

And then we get back to the water crossing.

And finally we got home.

Ok..... Time for damage assessment.








And this should be were this post ends.......

But its not.

I really wanted to play.

The truck did great. I was keeping up with my buddy in his open diffs jeep on 33" ATs in my front wheel drive locked truck on mud terrains.

And then I blew my driver side inner axle shaft coming back through this brook.

The next 300 feet were a winch fest.

I also found I had a leak at my valve stem.



And then I almost pulled this tree over. It was straight up when I started winching off of it. Inspite of having the tree strap right at the base of the tree, the soft ground wasnt strong enough. I resecured to a different tree and winched out.

And then my buddy lost a valve stem while maneuvering to winch me.

And then we got home with out any more issues.

The next day we decorated my truck. And then began driving home.

A little over half way home I started hearing funny noises coming from my 1wd front end.

That broken axle shaft decided to wipe out my axle seal.

Thank god for AAA.

Good news is that the rear gears are getting replaced under warranty.

Front gears may be salvageable.

Replacement axle shafts are cheap and plentiful at the junkyard.

 

[BlackBII]

Fun!

It seems like once you get everything done finally, you just get to fix it all over again.

I just went through almost the same thing on the BII.

 

[Sprag-O]

How many AAA tows you have left man???

And I think we may have a ride like that coming up soon... Derrick and I are going to go scouting the next couple weeks... figure about 100+ miles of trail to explore

 

[86ford]

Now that is my kinda wheeling. Running it till it cant go another tire revolution under its own power.

86

 

[Sunk]

You don't take no for an answer do you? At least the gears will be under warranty, I'll be waiting for pics of those!

 

[Bray D]

Gees man, that sucks. I can't believe you snapped a pinion in that terrain, looks relatively soft.

 

[Ranger44]

ahhh...dude.

That sucks. I think your're gonna have a broken *ish* bucket to rival andrews(compleckz) soon.

I'm sure he was rolling, as he wanted you to feel the hurt or breaking stuff.

 

[Bray D]

OK timeout - did you pull the diff cover and remove the head of the pinion? If not how did you drive with it still in there? I would think eventually the pinion would be pulled into the carrier, resulting in more carnage.

 

[Ranger44]

Removed the d-shaft maybe?

 

[Bray D]

The differential would still be spinning.

 

[metalmacguyver]

When turning the drive shaft I felt no resistance so my first thought was that it sheared of clean and perpendicular to the shaft as opposed to a spiral break. It did occure to me later that the carrier might get chewed up but seeing as how I have a spare, I wasnt worried about it.

I get 3 tows per year so I got 2 left.