ipopvtec

Blew my driveshaft. Was driving in traffic and heard a light clicking sound at random. Sounded like something was stuck underneath. I go on a few more miles... traffic. Thought I would make it to my destination and check it out. Then as I start speeding up 40 mph, the clicking gets BAD in neutral. Then I hear a huge CLUNK. Next stop light I hear a bolt fall and car acted if it was in neutral in gear. Got the car towed home and saw the driveshaft hanging down.













What could have happened? Looks like it disconnected/broke/snapped. Hopefully no bolts broke in the transmission side. Last time the shaft was off was when I did my clutch (March). Since then I drove almost 7,000 miles... HARD. NJ to North Carolina tore up the dragon for a weekend (April) and it broke in November... Never felt a problem till then. I make 200hp to the wheels.

Since then I found an aluminum one with u-joints that a member was selling from the driveshaft shop and is out getting balanced at a local driveline service. Just wondering what I can do to prevent this again (new bolts torque etc.) and what actually happened.

S2KIrishman

wow, i have never seen/heard of this happening...you made sure you torqued the bolts to spec when doing the clutch, right?

s2000maniac

umm maybe u popped a stronger VTEC this time...





but yea sorry for your incident. maybe the bolts werent tight enough or somehow the drivetrain slack must have gone away. that slack is there to prevent a problem like this happening.

ipopvtec

But after 7k miles?!?! in stop and go?! I drift this thing almost every day

Andersonracing

Wow, you really lucked out. usually when that happens the drive shaft goes thrashing through the undercarrage tearing apart the tail housing of the trans and any wiring in its way!

Importedpower

That really looks like it just came unbolted...? looks very cleanly disconnected lol

DocS2000

Notice that it broke on the transmission side of things, so it would not thrash around too much before he had a chance to react to the noise.

My diagnosis is improperly torqued bolts. one of them was likely cross-threaded a bit and that caused a moderate rotational interia to develop into more and more movement. eventually, spinning that fast things go snap.

Strange for an S2000, but common with GM muscle cars, that why they require a drive shaft loop for cars on the track.

realblag

Your bolts were improperly torqued and/or you had damaged threads in the output flange from when the clutch job was done. It went 7000 miles because bolts are not gonna back out right away. It needed enough vibration for a long enough period of time to get things to that point. The driveshaft has to pull back about 10mm just to get the end of it out of the inside of the flange. Looks like your gonna have to replace the output flange and of course the bolts. You might need a propeller shaft (drive shaft), too. It seems to have flung a lot of the grease out of the cv-joint in that end.

dwight

Your whole cross-threaded / rotational interia statement makes no sense to me (which could be due massive levels of ignorance on my part).

In my opinion/experience, insufficient torque could cause the bolts to fail because it allows for cyclic loading of the bolts themselves instead of the bolted joint.

Billman250

Undertightened bolts. Guaranteed. They have been working themselves loose in very small increments for quite some time.