broken drive shaft

[guardrail]

I was out riding the other night when my front drive axle broke.
It was a clean break next to the outer right side drive sprocket.
It was a smooth trail and I was just cruising around.
Has anyone heard of this or had it happen to them?

 

[bjowett]

Any pictures of the break? There was probably a small crack that began to propagate some miles ago. It was finally large enough to let go while cruising. Buy the book Engineer to Win by Carroll Smith for a great understanding on things like this....

 

[guardrail]

I'll get pictures tonight when I take it apart.
I just put new sprockets, bearings and a track on it. I checked for cracks and twisting while it was apart.
It was the first ride on them. I went about 50 miles before it broke.

 

[black john]

axel

did you mark the axel before you istalled the new drivers? like with a scribe as i just heard that one of my ride chums just did his with a hack saw he had hit arock with his new rev and with the 10 tooth drivers that the rev comes with the drivers hang down out of the chasie quite a bit. i lenth him my press to change his drivers but that was to slow. so he just marked his driver loction with a hack saw and pounded his drivers on with a big hamer and a pipe

 

[guardrail]

Yep, I marked them and measured them, then compared the measurements to what the book called for and everything was right on. I pressed the new ones on because I didn't want to hammer them to avoid this problem!
It just must have been a bad axle from the factory.
I could understand it if I had a turbo or something but this is basically stock except for an ecp kit.
What really sucked is, I had to walk 2 miles to get a cell signal so I could call to get a ride to my truck!

 

[bjowett]

The axle shaft broke at the weakest spot... scratch, underdesigned, bad material? Time for 4130 or 300m shaft.

 

[NOS-PRO]

Master of Faster broke his the same way in Munising 2 weeks ago. Non turbo/nitrous sled. Just broke!