My XJ took to the air today... need advice

Literally. The roads were extremely icy this morning in MN and i was running late for work. Took it slower on the way in but not slow enough (yes, now i feel like a dumbarse) Couldn't make a turn and slid directly into a snowbank head on and jumped over it into a deep ditch. I was airborn for about 15-20 feet and landed hard on the drivers side front wheel. Tire was torn off and the rim was bent pretty bad. Still running fine so I tried to drive out but only got a little ways until i heard a nasty grinding in the front where the wheel was hitting the tie rod. Luckily enough i bolted a spare on and was able to limp home.

The carnage was way less than I expected. My xj is lifted about 4.5" in the front and I have very strong boxed LCAS and they look straight but it looks like the LCA axle mount was messed up pretty bad from the front view but from the rear it looks like it is still lined up ok, maybe i just hit something and messed up the non vital front? Otherwise nothing out of the obvious strikes me as being bent or broken besides the wheel. Except that it seemed I was leaking quite a bit of dif. fluid out of the end of the axle on the side it landed on. Did i wreck a seal? What else could it be and what should i do about it?? I also bent up the end of the lower shock mount when it hit the "dogleg" part of the LCA. OUCH!

What should i check and go over before I can get this thing back to being streetable?? It drove home on the too-small spare suprisingly smooth at about 25mph. I think I'm going just going to regrease the balljoints, ect. Buy a new wheel and try to save the tire i mangled, slap it on and see how it drives. Sound safe? Everything still seems suprisingly solid. I was quite amazed... bottomed out so hard that a fuse actually popped out of my fusebox and my cd player was halfway out of the dash! Seatbelt kept me from hitting the wheel. I was fine and i'm just glad i didn't hurt anyone else.

Any help, reccomendations, and similar stores are welcome! Need to get this thing (my DD) back on the road asap or buy a beater if its really fawked!
Thanks.

well - leaking diff fluid - that spells trouble...

i would go so far as to pull the front axle completely and check it aginst everything that you can find... take the knuckle off and put it next to another one (maybe the one from the other side) and see if they are the same angles...

I say take it to a reliable alignment shop with an experienced tech, chances are it will need an aligment, tell them what has happened, if there something bent they should find it.

hahahahaha, I don't mean to laugh but I do since everyone is ok. I agree with taking it to a shop and making sure everything is straight.


(it was the mental image that got me...really)

Yeah I probably should pull the whole axle but I plan on trying driving it first anyway if I can make sure everything is solid. I'm going to refill the axle and see if it stops leaking (yeah right...) I will be aligning it the best I can by myself before driving at the very least. Both front wheels spin freely and 4wd works fine. I can't find any excessive play in the ball joints that wasn't there before (only a tiny amount) How "easy" do knuckles bend and is there any way i can check them while still on the heep? If thats the case I suppose I should go junkyard D30 hunting... I'd rather try to swap out a complete front end by myself at this point than deal with a shop trying to tweak every little part and charging $500 IF anything is screwed up... I've been there before and its not fun.
Thanks for the advice.

WobblesXJ said:

hahahahaha, I don't mean to laugh but I do since everyone is ok. I agree with taking it to a shop and making sure everything is straight.


(it was the mental image that got me...really)

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Yeah I even had to chuckle a litte about it too... Oh well, probably not the last time I'll break it! Wish I had a pic of the jump or better yet a video

buy a d44 and swap it in. No sense spending money to fix something like a 30 if you could get a better axle for less. Sounds like its going to be more headaches to fix the old one. While its out just swap it.

Look around and swap it with a better axel. It wil probably have to be taken apart and rebuilt.

Sounds like a nasty crash.

Yeah, my guess is your housing is bent. I did nearly the exact same thing to my rig about 4.5 years ago, only mine was goofing around offroading, not from icy streets. Went about 5' high and about 18' along before landing (landed hard enough to catch air off the bounce too). landed on the front driver tire first, bottomed out that, bent the upper shock mount area, bend the housing which broke the inner seal letting all the diff fluid leak out, and I tweaked the unibody just enough to cause a cap at the top of the driver's front door at the a-pillar.

Here's my recommendation, based on my experience and mistakes... get it cleaned up and survey just how bad the damage is. If you don't need 4wd, pull the axle shafts and driveshaft, put the stub shafts back in the hubs, and drive like that until you located a new/good D30 housing to swap in. DO NOT waste your money on a custom D44 front end. If you DO, suck it up and go with Dynatrac or Currie or MAD4wd, and get a HP housing. Otherwise, drive on your bent one and waste a tire or two until you can get a replacement D30. Through my impatience and ignorance at the time, I blew about $6k over the course of two years before it was all said and done, because of my bent D30 housing.

Thanks for the good advise Jeepin Jason. Sorry to hear of your misfortune also. How exaclty can I check to see if my housing is bent? (if even possible with common tools) Did you have vibes with your bent housing? I don't really see how else, besides a broken inner seal, dif fluid would be allowed to leak out so theres a good chance I did bend mine. However the unibody seems fine from what i can tell. I don't plan on doing a 44 swap at all atleast right now. If my D30 is messed up I'll probably just replace it with another one. I plan to leave it open and lock my rear 44. I'm only running 31s so don't have much reason to uprgrade right now...

xjfish said:

How exaclty can I check to see if my housing is bent?

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????

Can I drive it with in 2WD with low fluid in the front for short distances temporarily? (making sure the dif doesn't get hot) Nothing grinds in 2 or 4WD

well, looking at the front left tire, it was rather obvious that my housing was bent -- there was a noticable lean to the tire. I drove it home like that (~10 miles) and it seemed fine, folks behind me got sprayed with gear oil though... :bunny: At that point I pretty much parked it until I got a temporary front end to swap in.

xjfish said:

????

Can I drive it with in 2WD with low fluid in the front for short distances temporarily? (making sure the dif doesn't get hot) Nothing grinds in 2 or 4WD

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Theres only one way you can drive it without hurting anything else with no fluid. If you remove the outer stubs from the axles and drive that way. Anything else and the internals will spin and with no fluid it will burn up in about 5 miles.

That's backwards. You have to pull the shafts, seperate the inners from the outer stubs, but the stubs back in the hubs, then put it all back together minus the inner shafts. Without the stubs, say goodbye to the hubs.