Here I am with another story about what could have been a very ugly situation.

Tuesday September 5th 2006:

I get up for work and naturally am going to drive my car. Recently my passenger side wheel bearing has been very audible and an alarming about of vibrations can be felt at times. I drove my car and for the first 5mins of driving all felt normal.

I was approaching traffic, slowed down from about 35mph to about 10mph and hear a thunk/clunk and a whole lot of scraping. *****, I figure I might as well go back home and switch cars. I go to make a u-turn and the brakes turned their back on me. I downshift to slow the car down plus use the e-brake. I pull off to a side street, and examine thru and around the spokes to see nothing. I decide screw towing the car, I'll turtle her home. Hazards on and 3rd gear at 26mph got me home in about 15 mintues. I park my car and jump in the beater (Champage Coolie) and head to work.

I get home after work and examine the car only to find a delightful surprise.

 

That is exactly how the axle was seated I didnt start to remove it yet.



Both my axles are Raxles, so I'll give good ole Marty a call in the morning and see about a replacement.

I'm still shocked I snapped the Mother F**kin End of the AXLE!

just sharing another fun time with the Maxima

 

HOW TF did that happen?

 

holy..macoroni? that sucks..

 

O_o ........ how is that possible? what cud be the reason?

 

WOW. I hope there's a good explanation for this.

Your bearing's got *****.

 

daamn, that is some scary ****..!!

 

I dont know how that was able to snap into two pieces like that but since nothing was holding the axle it was slowly sliding out with each turn. Luckily I wasnt too far from home but If I drove it longer and made more turns, I be you the axle would have sliped out of the spindle, slapped up parts in that area (it would still be spinning from the tranny) and only one wheel drive on the other side.

 

Looks like too much torque from the 3.0 Unplug 3 of your coils, that should keep this from happening again. Just kidding! That sucks, I hope that doesn't happen to me.

 

Spoke to Mardy at Raxles and I just informed him of what happened and he immediately said another one is one they way. Damn those guys are good, Love that customer service.


I did use some seafoam yesterday, it probably cleaned up a lot of carbon deposits and gave better air flow. Which inadvertingly probably raised my compression ratio so I was putting down more power than normal

 

I am really suprised that happened with a raxle.

 

As was I.

The good thing about this situation is it will make me spend the next few days focusing on my car which I needed, so while the new one is on the way, time to drop the tranny and pull out the old...

 

Hopefully all your luck hasn't run out, it's just shifted to the 3.5 swap where it will be nice to have

 

Wow. I guess a wheel bearing going out can have some pretty bad effects. Im going to take a wild guess here, but what I think happened was the wheel bearing went out then ground down the hub so much it was placing all the weight on that part of the axle unevenly. That plus the added friction probably cause it to snap.

 

I think I still have my luck.And its cool cause I cant go anywhere so all I will do from now to monday is work on the car so the motor and tranny will come out tonight.
Sounds plausable. When I removed the axle the back of the hub came off, I assume that might have already been loose already so in additon to your statement, sounds like that is what might have happened.

 

ok i dont think that the bearing caused that to happen... those axles are tuff.. i did my buddies axles this weekend.. the bolt siezed i broke 3... 1/2 inch drive craftsman ratchets... then that didnt work so i cut axle nut in half with a grinder..... that is some crazy **** though man i have no explanation how it broke man

 

I dont know, the way the hub wears and the amount of play that it can cause would put some funky stresses on that part of the axle. You are talking about at least 1/2 of the weight of the car being on it. Remember it broke when the car was slowing down so the weight is being transfered to the front. I would be really interested to see pictures of the bearing end of the hub.

 

WOW. I had what I think was a bearing issue a few weeks back(loosened with Channel Lock pliers), but I tightened it properly. I haven't heard any noises since, but I DO have a clunk that is intermittent from that general area. May have to change those out REAL quick.....