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Track shaft fail

Turboflash

TY 4 Stroke God
Joined
Mar 18, 2019
Messages
2,436
Location
Southern MN
Country
USA
Snowmobile
'17 ZR9000 Ltd. 137 - PEFI Stage 4
Here is one from this past weekend from a friend of mine. I'm glad this happened in parking lot. Minutes earlier he was out on the lake running over 100 MPH! Looks like it maybe it was cracked for a while before it broke. Took out the whole chain case (both sides). Ruined the caliper and rotor too.
2019 TCat with Hurricane 250 tune. 1-1/2" Rip2 with lots of long studs.
Wonder what causes this?
 

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Yikes!
Lucky he has a guardian angle looking out for him....that could have gone very badly! The sled is just a sled and can be fixed.
 
All stock drive train. 24/50 gear. Was trail riding the sled all day.
 
Happened once to an Apex in our group. Middle of the woods. Had to build a log raft to haul the sled out. We towed it with my RX1 and a Polaris tied together for about 10 miles. His had been cracked for a while too as you could the rust. He had his limiter strap pulled up a bunch and i think it left the drivers exposed to some direct hits
 
First glad he is ok.


Second, was he running a drive shaft saver? Cuz it doesn't look like that worked

Third I remember the Ontario snowmobiler video
 
Lol...yes I think most of us remember that video.
I think Cat had a driveshaft issue that was supposedly fixed in 2015. Maybe the gremlins remain...
 
Wander if fitting a piece of pipe inside the driveshaft would be a good idea. While the pipe inside would not reduce torque load on the shaft it would prevent catastrophic failure. The pipe would keep everything somewhat functional by allow one cog to still have braking and one for drive.
 
The break seems pretty rare. And no one knows why it really broke. If it was due to cyclical fatigue caused by which is what I would hazard as a first guess, then fixing the cause is probably the answer. It would be nice to get that shaft in hand.
 


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