Broken Shaft Stuck in Aussie!

my passenger side (long side) axle shaft is broken off at the inner splines. the break was jagged and since i had to drive home, the two pieces ground together the whole way. Now i can't for the life of me get the broken stub out of the carrier:rattle:. because i have an aussie locker, i can't get at it to push it into the tube and remove the carrier. i tried pulling the carrier with no success, it wouldn't budge, even with a strap and hi-lift. so i'm assuming the shaft is just long enough to catch and hold the carrier in. judging by the rest of the shaft, it looks like it is just the length of the splines that is left, but it may be "mushroomed" out where it ground together. i tried pulling the ring gear to get the cross pin out so i could remove the aussie but there's no way the ring gear will move enough. i also tried hooking on to it with a magnet to pull it out but that didn't work either... if the smooth part of the shaft, where the seal is, is out, should i be able to pull the carrier? i can't see all te way down the tube clearly enough to tell if it is in fact hung up...

has any body else had to deal with this before? i've spent close to 5 weekends of nice weather on this and i'm getting closer and closer to a destructive solution.

pull the aussie and tap it out. try tapping it both away from the carrier and into tha carrier to find the way with least resistance

The tried and true way to get that stub out is with a stick welder. You have to weld several pieces of rod together and insulate any metal. Then instead of striking an arc, you jam it on the stub and stick the rod to it. Then pull. Good luck.

Had a similar situation with a Detroit in a Dana 35. Had to disassemble it in place more or less on the trail too! We had to break the stub out one little piece at a time. After 5 hours it was back on the trail, but it was a nightmare to do. Amazingly we got it back together correctly the first time with no issues.

You tried tapping the broken piece in towards the carrier? If that won't work you should be able to pull the opposite side shaft, remove the cross pin, the locker springs & pins and 3 of the couplers then pull the 2 pieces that are stuck together out as a unit and drive out the broken spline piece with a hammer and chisel. You shouldn't need to remove the carrier to fix it. Now with that said I'm a little worried about the whole high lift and strap part, you might have done permanent damage to the housing or carrier by doing that, I hope that's not the case but I would keep that in mind anyway. I think replacing the seal on that side might be a good idea as well from the sounds of it. I have an aussie in mine and had the same thing happen last winter, it sucked, but I learned that if your going to wheel a D30 with a locker stock shafts will not cut it. Get yourself a set of 4340 alloy shafts for the front and be done with it. The cost is well worth it in piece of mind alone.

i can't pull the cross pin with the carrier still in the diff because it won't slide out with the 4.56 ring gear... i can't think of any other way to get the aussie out and push the shaft out without removing the cross pin.
so basically, i can't think of any way to pull the cross pin, locker or the carrier. that doesn't leave me with many options so i may have to try the stick welding trick... it would be easy if i could just pull the aussie apart but that's not really an option :explosion

Cant remember, but you should be able to grind the top of one or two of the ring gear teeth to allow the pin to slide out. This wont have a negative effect on the ring gear.

Rockslut said:

Cant remember, but you should be able to grind the top of one or two of the ring gear teeth to allow the pin to slide out. This wont have a negative effect on the ring gear.

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X2 I'm surprised that it wasn't done already? I mean how are you supposed to take it apart again? You can do it with an angle grinder, just as much as you need to slide out the pin no more.

Rockslut said:

Cant remember, but you should be able to grind the top of one or two of the ring gear teeth to allow the pin to slide out. This wont have a negative effect on the ring gear.

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X3, this is your fix.

i've always pulled the ring gear to pull the cross pin... i think it will take a fair amount of grinding on two teeth because the installer didn't index them for the pin. i guess i'll have to give it a look tomorrow. it shouldn't be too much of an issue if i have to take a lot off right? on another note, there was a lot of metal in the diff fluid and it looks like the faces of the gear teeth are pitted and i'm sure the bearings aren't any better. do i need to be worried about the gears? as far as the bearings, if i replace them and re-use all the same shims, will my tolerances need to be re-set?

BADaXJ said:

on another note, there was a lot of metal in the diff fluid and it looks like the faces of the gear teeth are pitted and i'm sure the bearings aren't any better. do i need to be worried about the gears? as far as the bearings, if i replace them and re-use all the same shims, will my tolerances need to be re-set?

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That doesn't sound too good at all. I would think that's not normal? As for grinding the teeth, you should only have to do one or two of them to get the pin out mostly on the inside of the gear tapered out. Maybe turn the carrier 180* and see if that looks better.

I didn't read every single post and I don't remember exactly how large the ID of the aussie locker is... but the first thing that popped into my mind was to remove the opposite side shaft (Which I'm sure you've already done) then go find I piece of .25 x .50 flat bar cut it the right length and slide it thru the carrier from the opposite side right past the cross shaft and up against the end of the broken piece of shaft. (You might have to bend the end of the flat bar a lil and guide it to it's correct destination with the cover off) Now, I have no idea of that will work with and aussie but I did it with my lock-rite and it worked fine. Tho, mine was not really stuck... it was more just sitting there but I did manage to fish that piece of raw stock past the cross pin enough to tap out the broken end... Give that a shot before you start grinding teeth off the ring gear.
A

If you have metal in the fluid and obvious pitting on the gear teeth, you're probably going to need bearings. The current shim pack on new bearings should be pretty damn close, if not spot on. 'Problem is, even perfect setup, with pitting on the gear teeth, that axle is going to be noisy.

Lesson learned, pull both shafts at the trail, knock out the axle shaft u-joints, put the stubbies back in and torque them, plug the axle tubes with some old rags, pull the front DS and then drive it home!

The stuck shaft would most likely slide right out if it had not been ground to hell and back from the drive.

xjtrailrider said:

Lesson learned, pull both shafts at the trail, knock out the axle shaft u-joints, put the stubbies back in and torque them, plug the axle tubes with some old rags, pull the front DS and then drive it home!

The stuck shaft would most likely slide right out if it had not been ground to hell and back from the drive.

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Then you'd new to carry two outer stub shafts or disassembly both u-joints on the trail, then pull the driveshaft, that's crazy, who does that? Plus all the fluid would be sloshing in and out of the axle tubes mixing with all the dirt and rocks in there and totally destroy the axle anyway. I wouldn't do that on my truck. Whoever installed the gears and locker should have been smart enough to realize that they were making a big mistake not grinding out a slot so you could get the pin out later.

A few things...

- never should have driven it like that! You risked having it jam on something, blow up the U-joint ears, and rip your balljoints in half, that means your wheel falls off while you're on the road. Not good. The best plan would have been to pull the part of the shaft that you could get to, i.e. yank the unit bearing and shaft out as a unit, then cut the ears of the inner shaft and/or chop up or press out the U-joint and reinstall the unit bearing and stub shaft. You have to run the outer stub shaft to keep the unit bearing from popping apart, but you can run without an inner shaft just fine, ram a sock in the tube to keep the diff lube mostly inside.
- sounds like you may need a new gearset and bearings anyways. Grind the teeth on the ring gear till the cross shaft can slide out and get it apart that way.
- if the break is where it sounds like it is, you may need a new inner axle shaft seal on that side now.

EDIT: Rob, I know people who do. It's not that difficult really - the inner shaft is already junk, so you could chop the ears off it with no worries. And a snapped in half shaft right at the carrier / bearing / axle tube seal isn't gonna do the seals or diff any favors either, I'd rather risk some dirt in the diff than have that thing bouncing around in there. Lube leaks out of the diff pretty easy with no shaft in, but stuff trying to get back in has a bit of a hill to get up.

Heck now you have spare outer stub shafts since you busted the inner that went with it, keep them and the unit bearings they are attached to as "get me off the trail" spares and buy a new set of shafts and unit bearings at the junkyard for 30 bucks a side.

lowrange2 said:

I didn't read every single post and I don't remember exactly how large the ID of the aussie locker is... but the first thing that popped into my mind was to remove the opposite side shaft (Which I'm sure you've already done) then go find I piece of .25 x .50 flat bar cut it the right length and slide it thru the carrier from the opposite side right past the cross shaft and up against the end of the broken piece of shaft. (You might have to bend the end of the flat bar a lil and guide it to it's correct destination with the cover off) Now, I have no idea of that will work with and aussie but I did it with my lock-rite and it worked fine. Tho, mine was not really stuck... it was more just sitting there but I did manage to fish that piece of raw stock past the cross pin enough to tap out the broken end... Give that a shot before you start grinding teeth off the ring gear.
A

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Have you tried this? Or have you done anything?

And, everytime I break a shaft on the trail I pull it all out right where it sits.

i picked up some stock today after work... one flat and one round so i'll give that a shot tonight. in the future, i'll have hubs with stubs already in them but that night, it was 11:30pm, 9 miles into the woods with work at 4am the next day. i wasn't in much of a mood to dig around in the mud. now i'm paying for it though, lesson learned.

I was out at a local park once. It was almost closing time... I figured I'd make one more go around the trail. I climbed up a rock that i'd gone over 10 times earlier that day. Busted the joint on the passenger side. I had the front end up on the rock so I figured I'd back up about 6 feet so I could safely pull everything apart on flat ground. THAT was a mistake... I backed up, the ears on the two shafts hooked onto each other and forced the knuckle down far enough that it picked itself up off the ball joints. The next thing I knew I had a 3 wheeler. The only thing holding the wheel on where the steering links and a brake line. I broke it around 7pm. I didn't get to limp it out of the park until 1am. It would have been a quick fix if I hadn't backed up. Plus, everything was covered with THICK mud... It's kinda hard to thread one of those fine thread bolts into the caliper bracket when it's covered in mud...

LESSON LEARNED. If you break a shaft. DONT MOVE!

well, the flat stock slid right in through the tube on the other side and popped the stub out into the tube. makes me really wish i'd tried that first! i thought about it but didn't think anything stiff enough would fit through there.
the bad news is that the carrier will not budge a bit. after trying the usual, delicate methods for removal, i resorted to carefully hooking ratchet straps (one on each side, near the bearings) and trying to put some tension on it. after it was to the point that i didn't want to pull any harder, i tried tapping on the housing, where the center section meets the tubes. still, not the slightest sign of movement. it looks like the seal is trashed and maybe the spring is caught up in the bearing? the carrier and pinion still rotate as freely as normal though... any ideas for removing the stuck carrier? case spreader? slide hammer?
Thanks for the help!