BF Goodrich KDW's + 4.08 gears + $hitty road + stupidity = snapped axle

Well to make a long story short...I was going to do a little burn out on this back road with my friend and as soon as I dropped the clutch *POP* and there I sat I had just installed the 4.08 gears over Christmas so I just knew I blew the rear-end. But after inspection and noticing that the right rear axle was turning when the left axle was not, I knew that it broke an axle.

Here is a pic of the outer boot taken apart:


But my question is..Why did it break? Was it because of meaty tires, lower gears and a horrible road? Just because the car has 107,000 miles on it? Or just because I'm dumb and it needed to break to teach me a lesson?

 

This is unfortunate. 107,000 miles of abuse. Something is bound to break.

 

That's what I figured.

 

Dumping the clutch + street tires + dry road = reason. Be prepared to keep breaking axles if you don't learn how to do a proper burnout.

 

Never dump the clutch, unless you just went thru water.

I snapped an axle on the street of all places as well, on a 1-2 shift spinning I hit a "bump" in the road and it sheared much like yours. Spinning + suspension compressing and decompressing rapidly = ouch

You have to always be careful of spinning over bumps. Lesson learned, you can get OEM replacements cheap, I got some on carparts.com

 

Yeah I learned my lesson as well. I can get an axle from where I work for about $150

 

Thats expensive several years ago I found them for $80-100 per side, should be the same or even cheaper now!

 

Well it all depends on if they accept my core, which they should. In that case it will be about $90

 

I would buy a new cage for the bearings and the part that pushes on the axle inside the cage as well. I snapped and axle, put a new one in only to have the inner bearing assembly break apart on the track two days later. It rounded off the splines on the new axle or at the very least make sure you take a good look over everything to be sure it dosent have hair line cracks.

 

I'm gonna look over everything real good, grease everything up.

 

Berto you run stock axles? And you have only broken 1? I just figured as hard as you drive yor car you had staged axles.

 

I have DSS 5's now, I got them at a KILLER deal brand new I couldnt pass up. First trip to the track the freaking cotter pin somehow fails and I had to replace the Dss 5's with a stocker to get home from the track lol. The stocker I did break on the street though of all places.

Its cheaper to buy many stockers as extra

 

Damn the 5's are bomb proof, and a cotter pin shut em down. That sucks man I can only imagine how irritating that had to be.

 

Yeah it was one of those little quirks that will set you back and aggrevate the $hit out of you. Even worse were all the peeps asking Q's trying to converse with me as Im under the car using my other cars headlights for light and its cold lol. The axle shop spot welded that beotch on and its been fine since.

 

I don't think you can use just any grease either, so be sure to look that up.