here's by psa advice for all 40 and 55 owners. over the years i'v always checked my driveshaft bolts and often times found 1 or 2 loose. would tighten them up and life was good. checked before the 40's only run and everything was tight. didn't check before our annual run and everything was good until it wasn't. had just gotten on the highway in the vicinity of Grant, mt when i started feeling a significant vibration. was running about 70 and started slowing down immediately when it got much worse . figured i had blown the engine and was almost down enough to pull off the highway when things got bad. thankfully it was the rear end yoke that came apart, you can imagined what happened then. thankfully one of our guys was behind me and saw where part of the shaft flew across the road into the ditch. wasn't long until everyone got turned around and got back to where i was and commenting how cool it looked and glad it wasn't their truck it happened to.
the splined end had the end of the splines screwed up after doing a dandy job on my passenger exhaust pipe and cross member. the female end was kind of oblong shaped. i figured i was finished and would be slowly going home in fwd, we got to thinking of options and used a cutoff wheel and took off about a quarter of an inch of spline, then a grinding wheel to bevel it. if we had had a bottle of scotch we might have came up with a better idea but a ball peen hammer seemed to be about the perfect fit so we placed the ball peen end into position and hammered it with another hammer. after several strikes it looked decent especially when it was over 90 degrees with no shade for miles and a 20-30 mph breeze. it didn't want to fit together and was about to give up hope when one of the guys appears with a sledge hammer he had forgot to take out of his truck. figuring we had nothing to lose we place the spline where we hoped was close to the right spot and went to town with the sledge. amazingly it started going together. a few more wacks and it was enough to put it back on the 40 . took off slowly and no vibration, only vibration was when backing off the throttle so off to dillion we went. since no one had a grease gun i had to buy one and greased it up. no more vibration that i can feel so i spent 2 more days running trails. i'm tempted to pull it apart to clean out the grass and dirt and then run it but my gut is telling me that i'd be pushing my luck. the blue plastic like stuff on the splines got significantly removed and i'm told that's not a good thing. sam and i will haul it to townsend for exhaust and muffler work thursday then i'm going to cry and have gus make me another driveshaft. this will be #3 in a year on the 40 but i will be carrying a spare rear ds in my parts kit.
so the reason for this long winded saga of my normal misfortune when i go with these guys is for you guys to check your ds nuts and make sure they're tight. I'll be making a call to cruiser outfitters tomorrow and ordering a new rear yoke that hat a tab broken off and seeing if they have any lock nuts for the toyota bolts. i'll also order some spare bolts just to carry along.
i will also have a couple suggestions for next years 40's only run that i think might be considered. we only had 3 40's that went on this years run and it was a good one, besides the ho chi minh trail shortcut matt took us on lol. if your 40 needs worked on my shop is always open, you have almost a year to get it out of your garage and get it on the trail where it belongs, they aren't meant to go to the malls.
on a side note lol, jakes really nice 1st gen tundra that you have seen some pics of also had ds issues, he exploded the double cardan joint while playing on some big rocks. he missed the final lake we went to.
the splined end had the end of the splines screwed up after doing a dandy job on my passenger exhaust pipe and cross member. the female end was kind of oblong shaped. i figured i was finished and would be slowly going home in fwd, we got to thinking of options and used a cutoff wheel and took off about a quarter of an inch of spline, then a grinding wheel to bevel it. if we had had a bottle of scotch we might have came up with a better idea but a ball peen hammer seemed to be about the perfect fit so we placed the ball peen end into position and hammered it with another hammer. after several strikes it looked decent especially when it was over 90 degrees with no shade for miles and a 20-30 mph breeze. it didn't want to fit together and was about to give up hope when one of the guys appears with a sledge hammer he had forgot to take out of his truck. figuring we had nothing to lose we place the spline where we hoped was close to the right spot and went to town with the sledge. amazingly it started going together. a few more wacks and it was enough to put it back on the 40 . took off slowly and no vibration, only vibration was when backing off the throttle so off to dillion we went. since no one had a grease gun i had to buy one and greased it up. no more vibration that i can feel so i spent 2 more days running trails. i'm tempted to pull it apart to clean out the grass and dirt and then run it but my gut is telling me that i'd be pushing my luck. the blue plastic like stuff on the splines got significantly removed and i'm told that's not a good thing. sam and i will haul it to townsend for exhaust and muffler work thursday then i'm going to cry and have gus make me another driveshaft. this will be #3 in a year on the 40 but i will be carrying a spare rear ds in my parts kit.
so the reason for this long winded saga of my normal misfortune when i go with these guys is for you guys to check your ds nuts and make sure they're tight. I'll be making a call to cruiser outfitters tomorrow and ordering a new rear yoke that hat a tab broken off and seeing if they have any lock nuts for the toyota bolts. i'll also order some spare bolts just to carry along.
i will also have a couple suggestions for next years 40's only run that i think might be considered. we only had 3 40's that went on this years run and it was a good one, besides the ho chi minh trail shortcut matt took us on lol. if your 40 needs worked on my shop is always open, you have almost a year to get it out of your garage and get it on the trail where it belongs, they aren't meant to go to the malls.
on a side note lol, jakes really nice 1st gen tundra that you have seen some pics of also had ds issues, he exploded the double cardan joint while playing on some big rocks. he missed the final lake we went to.
Should we do a Fall run? Around the last two weekends in October? Open it up to 60s too?
Sorry about the ho chi minh trail. It looked better on the map, I swear.
