Could've been worse

[RustyBucket]

Sunny 70* afternoon yesterday so I wiped the shop dust off of the 2wd. Blazer & took it for a ride. Pretty rural here, cows & orange groves. About 5mi. North I made a u-turn through the median on US-1. Nobody around so I brought the RPM up to 1500-2000, dumped the clutch & floored the accelerator. Got a big metallic BLANG noise & coasted off to the side of the road. Engine running fine, TKO trans. would shift in all gears, but no pwr. to the rear wheels. I had visions of EXPENSIVE busted transmission. AAA rollback arrived in about an hour. As he was loading he crawled underneath & told me it had wrung the driveshaft off. BIG RELIEF !!!
Driver helped me push it onto the lift when we got home & I took a couple of pictures. I was really surprised when this happened, I've had it 5-6yrs and run it pretty hard. I don't full throttle shift it or pull 4000rpm hole shots but I stand on the throttle regularly. It's a fun toy to play with and has been completely reliable. Maybe my new tires got a better bite.

[A1971Blazer]

Glad it wasn't your transmission......but waiting for a hour for a tow truck and you never even looked under it...?

[hewittca]

Originally Posted by A1971Blazer

Glad it wasn't your transmission......but waiting for a hour for a tow truck and you never even looked under it...?

That thought ran through my head while reading but I'm sure there's a reasonable answer to that.

I hate to see when others' break parts, yet it is always interesting to see the carnage. Glad it wasn't anything more complicated than that. That's some drag racing level damage there! You definitely got it to "hook up" ... for a second.

[RustyBucket]

Originally Posted by A1971Blazer

Glad it wasn't your transmission......but waiting for a hour for a tow truck and you never even looked under it...?

My Blazer's pretty LOW, & I'm old n' gimpy... I was curious but couldn't think of anything I could fix laying in the rocks & weeds next to the road. My wife brought me a cold drink & waited with me.

[A1971Blazer]

Originally Posted by RustyBucket

My Blazer's pretty LOW, & I'm old n' gimpy... I was curious but couldn't think of anything I could fix laying in the rocks & weeds next to the road. My wife brought me a cold drink & waited with me.

I understand....not trying to diss you in any way...just curious..new driveshaft will be an easy repair.....best of luck...carry on...

[Clyde65]

Looks like a not so good weld on that drive shaft. Glad there wasn’t more carnage than that!!

[Tom]

I blew one like that leaving high school in my 78, didn't even hit the gas hard enough to spin the BFG's that had zero traction to begin with. But the previous year of abuse was probably enough haha

[mongocanfly]

that's a really nice blazer ...hopefully the ds is all you damaged...

[RustyBucket]

Originally Posted by A1971Blazer

I understand....not trying to diss you in any way...just curious..new driveshaft will be an easy repair.....best of luck...carry on...

Cool, I'm not very "diss" sensitive
When I first stopped I realized my phone was dead, Grrr, flagged down a nice guy that let me call wifey to come rescue me. While I was waiting about 50 enormous black cows apparently thought I had dinner for them. Ran up to the fence & stood there MOO-ING at me 'til the feed guy came to the other end of the pasture. Not a bad afternoon.

[BossHogg69]

Looks like that was about the best possible spot that could've broken! Wow. Love that Blazer though - that ochre & white is my favorite two tone! Gotta love big blocks & 3 pedals - that 3.27 1st gear in that TKO is a doozy!

[RustyBucket]

Took awhile for the Ochre color to "grow" on me. The engine is very mild & torquey, pulls pretty good from idle up to 5000. Low compression peanut port engine. Kinda needs the steep 3.27 first gear with a 3.08 rear. Runs about 2000rpm at 80mph in O.D. I have a set of 063 casting heads with a lot of work in them. Those heads, a cam change & more gear would really wake it up, but I hate to mess with it 'cause it's so reliable & easy to drive.

[Ironangel]

Those comments of not looking under the truck reminded me of a painfully funny lesson I learned on I-75 back in 1981. I was hauling construction equipment from Tampa to Homestead in a 1 ton dually pulling a trailer...I was hauling the mail at 77 mph wondering what all them little piles of dirt were on the shoulders?...Out in the middle of the boondocks a Florida State Trooper pulls me over for speeding, he asks for my license and registration and has me stand in front of his squad car pointing, "stand right there while I call this in" he say's...So I stand exactly where he pointed watching the traffic go by when all of the sudden I feel these bee like stings to my lower legs! Not wanting to alarm or make the trooper think I was reaching for a weapon in my boots, I began waving my arms trying to get the troopers attention, by now my legs from the knee down were stinging and burning like he11! Finally he gets out of the car and asks me whats going on? "I dont know" I said, my legs are burning! He looks down and laughs, well your standing on that fire ant hill! "I'm standing exactly where you pointed me to stand sir"...He giggled and said, "they wait till they get to your knees then they all bite at once dont they"...I'm like, well I dont want you to think I'm going for weapon but I got to kick these boots off!" I hurry to the back of the trailer and kick off my boots realizing my jeans are going to have to come off too! At that point I didn't care if he shot me or not, I was ON FIRE! And dont you know, Just as soon as I get them jeans off, a car load of women stop to ask the trooper for directions! There I am on the side of Interstate, standing in my skivvies, doing a wild monkey dance trying to shake them little critters out of my jeans! I know that trooper and those women had a good laugh..."Yeah, he aint from around here"...He gave me back my paperwork and gave me a warning..."Watch them Fire Ants" he laughingly warned..."Yes sir, no thank you sir!" I said...So, now I know what them little dirt piles all up and down Florida highways are...YIKES!

[whitedog76]

I had something similar happen a few years ago. I thought I blew the driveshaft out on the Kenworth I was driving, as it turns out the power dividider case split in two. We couldn’t push it to the shoulder.

[mattfranklin]

Glad it was not worse. I did that once in in high school back in 1978 in my dad's 1977 Dodge van. First new car he ever bought. 360 V-8 with a 727-Torqueflight. I had just discovered this thing where you rev the engine in neutral at any speed, jam in into low, and you could break the tires loose. It was later explained to me that this is called a neutral drop. It worked great the first two times. The third time I heard a loud bang. I stopped right away to see what was wrong. The car was stopped, but I kept hearing this tink, tink, tink sound and speedometer kept bouncing around until I put it in park. My dad was not happy. But we laugh about it now.