Cracked Axle!!

[JDraper]

Well, I found an interesting one here. Just put in a 4" superlift on a 96 Explorer, and looky what I found! This is where the vacuum disconnect for the hubs is attached to the axle. Gonna take it down to our local specialty welding shop soon and see what they can do.


BTW, anyone else seen this kind of problem before??

 

[JDraper]

Wider angle view of crack.

 

[Spas]

First a hydrolocking, then a tree, now this...what else is the "wonder of the woods" going to surprise us with? LOL

Wooo...that's a mean looking crack.....Good luck getting it fixed!

 

[TarHeel085]

ouch, that looks like it hurts.

 

[RFR2212]

one of the guys up here completely grenaded his front end one wheelin trip...

 

[JDraper]

Well, got the old axle out today, and the case is grenaded!!! Broke clean in half as I took it out. Here's a couple of pix.

 

[JDraper]

Pix 2.

 

[Jason_25]

What's the gearing?

I have a 96 Explorer front axle sitting in my garage with approx. 30K miles on it with 4.10's. I need to get rid of it badly because I changed my mind and am going with 4.56's.

Let me know if I can help you guys out.

 

[FAKRWEE]

By the looks of the rust on the right side seems it had been cracked for a while. You were lucky. Never seen that before.

 

[tomblin1]

Better finding it out now instead of out in the middle of........................

 

[JDraper]

Originally posted by Jason_25
What's the gearing?

I have a 96 Explorer front axle sitting in my garage with approx. 30K miles on it with 4.10's. I need to get rid of it badly because I changed my mind and am going with 4.56's.

Let me know if I can help you guys out.

It's 4.10's but we already have another axle for it locally. Thanks for the offer though.

Originally posted by FAKRWEE
By the looks of the rust on the right side seems it had been cracked for a while. You were lucky. Never seen that before.

That's the aluminum front axle out of the Gen II IFS setup. The discoloration is actually dirt, not rust. The section you're looking at is the box for the vacuum disconnect on the front axle. The aluminum where it cracked is about 1/2" thick.

I think what happened is there was a small crack to start with, and when the larger wheels and lift were added, it split when I took it out for a test run.

And yes, we were damn glad this happened near my house instead of 200 miles from nowhere

 

[brendan]

WOW! That's one dangerous situation avoided! Nice spotting Jeff; I've never quite seen something as bad as that!

 

[JDraper]

I think I finally found the reason for the axle breakage! I was installing the new axle this morning with the suspension at full droop, and when I put the half shaft in on the passenger's side, I decided to spin it by hand before installing the rest of the components. The shaft spun about 1/8 turn and locked up! I could see the axle housing rocking as I tried to turn it. I then put a jack under the a-arm, lifted it up into it's normal position and tried to spin the axle end again. This time it spun freely. I dropped the jack down and it locked up again. I think the half shaft locking up put too much stress on the axle housing and cracked the housing. Time for a new half shaft!!!

The reason that I didn't see this the first time around was that I did the half shaft install with the a-arms supported last time. I did spin them by hand to test for binding, but not at full droop.

NOTE TO ALL PEOPLE DOING A SUSPENSION LIFT OR TORSION TWIST WHEN LONGER SHOCKS ARE BEING USED. MAKE SURE YOU CHECK FOR BINDING HALF SHAFTS BY ROTATING THE HUB BY HAND AT FULL DROOP BEFORE YOU TAKE IT FOR A TEST DRIVE!!!

 

[Hokie]

Was that your axle or Karols?

 

[JDraper]

That was Karol's axle.