breaking rear ujoint/yoke at speed...

I know drag racers use some sort of "cage" to keep confined a ds if one of the ujoints goes. Has anyone ever seen or fabricated something like this for an xj?

Last summer my rear ujoint broke at about 10mph, I limped home a half a mile in low with the ds flopping around on the ground, but didn't ruin the rear yoke enough where it wouldn't accept a new ujoint, or thrashed the tc.

I'd hate to see this happen at 60mph. I'm running 31's with 3.55's still, with 4.10's still sitting in my garage after two years. Would the present gearing put more of a strain on the ujoints, or does it not matter the ratio. It's a sixstates cv ds and currie sye. Is there a heavy duty ujoint I can install in the rear versus the Spicer (don't know the pn off hand) that would minimize a breakage scenario?

Thanks,

Mike/NY #300

the prob with a ds hoop is that it will get hit in extreem articulation and usually u know when your gonna break a joint (wtf why did you drive on it it just slides out the back of your t-cas) yea gears will help the stress on your DS u-joints but the front outer axle joints will see the same stress. if your concerned about the u-joint breaking, CHECK IT and see if its loose or cracked.

bj-666 said:

(wtf why did you drive on it it just slides out the back of your t-cas)

Click to expand...

without a SYE you loose your tranny fluid if you pull it

drive loop is bad for clearance and will hit at full flex.

You lose fluid on early models when you pull the d/s, late models have a different tailcone on an NP231 and don't exhibit this problem.

And a half mile isn't going to lose appreciable fluid either. It may be ATF, but it's coming from the t-case, not the trans.

During one of the many times I broke a rear u-joint on my 2.5L XL (go figure, eh?), I lost ALL my T-case fluid in less than a block. Granted it may have been low to begin with, and when it broke, the driveshaft fell out and I hit the gas which also probably pumped lots of fluid out...

But regardless, yes, you can lose a significant amount of fluid in a short time.


Also, this fellow said he had a SYE installed. So this is all moot anyway.

-Brad

Yeah, there's a flange on the Currie so nothing is going to leak out, I just don't want to destroy the yoke if the thing snaps and begin spinning around. I recall seeing in a magazine some kind of bombproof ujoint, except it's cost was in the triple digits.

I don't 'wheel as much as l'd like to, so I'm not concerned that much about the front axle ujoints.

And yes, I had EXTREME vibes I thought were coming from up front, what was left of the rear ujoint when it grenaded was dry, looked as if the needle bearings ground themselves away. Honest, I kept meaning to put the xj on jackstands and find the problem.. :speepin:

Thankks,

Mike # 300

with a relatively stock XJ, just keep fairly new Spicer 1310 joints in the shaft and grease them occasionally and you won't break a joint.

Thanks for the words, they are much appreciated.

In the past, when I'd lube the Cardan joint up front and the rear ujoint, I'd take great pains to wipe clean all the extra mobil syn. grease that was pushed out. Now I don't know if this makes any sense, but now I leave whatever grease was pushed through to sort of act as a barrier against water/dirt. Yeah, much of it spins off, but I hope this logic works.

Thanks again,

Mike #300

Oh yeah, $550 already credited back, plus tax.