Dana 35 kaboom

I was pulling Desert Broom out of the yard this last week and after much success I had a little failure. For those of you that don't know, Desert Broom is a bush/weed thing that grows in the southwest and if you just cut it down it will come back again and again and each time the roots seems to be longer and longer... I got 3 large desert brooms up and the 4th one was in an odd spot so I had the front wheels turned. The truck squatted, started to pull the Desert Broom up and then bam....

Dana 35 carnage by maniak_az, on Flickr

Luckily I've done the c-clip eliminator on the front axle so I had it changed in less than an hour to one of the spares I have in the shed. I'm surprised that it was the center u-joint on the long side shaft the broke and not one of the ones near the end... or a hub. I had the wheels turned quite a bit and I was in 4wd low & reverse.

The 3 plants I got up had roots about 3-4 feet deep.. The one that I failed to pull looks to be deeper AND it looks like it may have gone under the foundation....

~Mark

 

[Josh P]

I usually end up bending the metal on the car where the hook is attached to the body. I tried to pull 2 cactus stumps out of my front yard years ago and they would not move. Giant paddle type with flowers in the spring. The sky would turn black from all the bees. I've never had to deal with desert broom, sounds like I don't want to either.

 

[RangerX]

I've seen that happen several times with reverse pulls.
You got it back to together, now try again, this time pulling forward!