Lavender Steel
New member
Can't say I've been around this forum much since a Landcruiser entered into my life ... but I know we all love a good horror story so here you go:
Got on the interstate headed to work last week and felt a slight vibration at speed. I had just noticed an exhaust leak over the weekend and had parts on the way so I wrote it off as the rusty muffler finally shaking itself to bits. Next day I get back on the highway to work and it's clearly not the muffler - well I've got a big meeting at work and it'll have to wait.. Nope! a few more miles and it gets really bad. Luckily I had already started to merge toward the exit when the big bang happened. Clutch pedal sucked to the floor and the gear lever sunk in my hand. I knew it was bad when I got the shoulder and found my clutch fork 10 ft behind the car.
Pretty easy to take out when the bellhousing has exploded off the block!
Input shaft is toast (bearing retainer too)
One of the bellhousing bolt ears on the block broke off
Inside of the double cardan joint
Based on what's broke and what isn't, my best guess is the double cardan failed at the ball/centering yoke and bound the rear drive shaft, pulling the back end of the transfer case off center and ripping the bellhousing and input shaft in half. This is the only explanation I can come up with to explain how the DC, input shaft, and bellhousing could fail so catastrophically without any damage to anything else :shrug:
No idea if this has happened to anyone here before, but I'll do my best to write up the rebuild process, if for no other reason than to provide some much needed reference material for the few owners of the 4 cylinder/5 speed 3rd gens :frog:
...more to come
Got on the interstate headed to work last week and felt a slight vibration at speed. I had just noticed an exhaust leak over the weekend and had parts on the way so I wrote it off as the rusty muffler finally shaking itself to bits. Next day I get back on the highway to work and it's clearly not the muffler - well I've got a big meeting at work and it'll have to wait.. Nope! a few more miles and it gets really bad. Luckily I had already started to merge toward the exit when the big bang happened. Clutch pedal sucked to the floor and the gear lever sunk in my hand. I knew it was bad when I got the shoulder and found my clutch fork 10 ft behind the car.
Pretty easy to take out when the bellhousing has exploded off the block!
Input shaft is toast (bearing retainer too)
One of the bellhousing bolt ears on the block broke off
Inside of the double cardan joint
Based on what's broke and what isn't, my best guess is the double cardan failed at the ball/centering yoke and bound the rear drive shaft, pulling the back end of the transfer case off center and ripping the bellhousing and input shaft in half. This is the only explanation I can come up with to explain how the DC, input shaft, and bellhousing could fail so catastrophically without any damage to anything else :shrug:
No idea if this has happened to anyone here before, but I'll do my best to write up the rebuild process, if for no other reason than to provide some much needed reference material for the few owners of the 4 cylinder/5 speed 3rd gens :frog:
...more to come
