i was driving with my friends a few hours ago after watching the fireworks display down the road, when we were 5sec away from my friends and i felt a thud and it felt like something fell off. so i pulled in his drive way and took my flashlight and looked under the truck when sure enough, first thing i looked at the last u-joint on the driveshaft. i don't know how it happened, last week when i was putting my truck back togethorm i noticed that the bolts for that retainer were loose so i left them so i could get home. the next morning i retapped the holes but i then realized the tap was coarse thread instead of fine thread so i found some bigger grade 8 bolts i had lying around and replace the little bolts ith those and torqued them up a tad tighter. well, like i said i don't know what happened but what i do know is the bolts didn't snap out of the holes, they like twisted out. since i fixed my truck 2 wednesdays ago i have only taken it on the freeway 4 times.
anybody else have this happen? or find this strangely weird? what should i do, find some more grade 8 bolts and threadlock them in?

 

i am very very abusive ti my truck and i have never had that happen

 

Can't figure out what happened there but could that be the reason they use fine thread ? ? ? Whatever difference that would make?

 

It happened to me once. I would say it was due to my front u joint it split in half. The front of the drive shaft dropped then spun around then snapped off the rear. Good thing it didn't puncture the gas tank. I was going about 65mph.

The front yoke was still in the tail housing of the transfer case. I stuffed some tape onto the splines so I could drive home with out it leaking.

I dropped it into 4wd and drove on the freeway at 65 just off of the front axle. I love 4wd!!

So I had to replace the transfer case tail shaft housing, drive shaft, and the yoke on the rear end. I got all the parts at a junkyard. New HD U-Joints and it is all good.

 

i found out that a part of a bolt that had snapped off when this happened exactly 1 yr ago to the date was in there but we tried other fine thread bolts and the all came loose even with re-tapping the hole, so we ended up dring through the yoke and just putting a nut, bolt and lock washer on it. it held up fine to the burn outs and such(lol). but that was the strangest thing cuz last year when my driveshaft fell off(unfortunately no 4wd) my truck shuddered so violently that my radar detector fell off the windsheild and it beat teh tank so badly and the frame had huge gashes on it. last night it just felt like someone hit me but being the only on on the road at the time, i had a hunch.

 

lucky, ALL of our junkyards pick the vehicles up with forklift type things and crush the under carrige of ALL the vehicles, had to drive an hour with a 50/50 chance of getting one to another yard. they waste such good parts

 

you should have been at teh store with my friend and i when i went to get the new cap. the guy told me that teh retainer cap was part of the u-joint itself. then he told me that they didn't sell them. the tension got thick with him and i. finally after i almost got booted from teh store for arguing with the dumby, my friend stepped in and we finally got the part under the name that i gave him in the first place.
as patrick once said, "some people are just blissfully unaware of how dumb they really are."