Hello everyone, Im a new member, and am here seeking some information about a problem i had over the weekend with my Ram

It is a 2002 Ram 1500, 2wd, 5.9, auto transmission and 110,000miles.

I service the ram regularly, and has been a absolutely wonderfull vehicle the entire time ive had it.

I recently got to the point with another vehicle that im building in the garage, that i needed to trailer it to a location. I have a 16ft open bed trailer, thats home made, dual axle, medium weight. The vehicle is only a bare frame as of now, with a small block motor sitting in the frame rails, and full suspension. The frame and motor probably weigh 1200lbs, and the trailer may be the same.

Anyways, ive towed trailers with 4-whelers on them forever and never had a problem, usually 4 quads on trailer, with a bed full of equipment. Ive allways towed it with the Overdrive On, just like normal daily driving, never had a problem, allways pulled fine,

last weekend i attatched my trailer with the frame on it to the truck, and set off to go to Kentcky for the weekend to a show. Got about 450 miles into my trip and my rear end completely exploded. Literally, a gaping hole out the bottom.

Why? Does it have anythign to do with the fact that i towed that load with the OD off also? i was going about 70mph the whole time, and it was doing a fair amount of upshifting and accelerating. but nothing seemed abnormal about it, it pulled fine.

I know the rear end didnt run dry because i had just had it serviced earlier this year, and it dosetn have a leak.

What caused this?

should I be towing this load with the OD off?

is this too heavy of a load for my truck?

or is this just something that is common with these trucks?

im a chassis fabricator by trade, and ive been towing things with various trucks since i was 16, and ive never had a problem like this.......i was stranded down in scotsburg, IN for 5 days, and had a wonderfull bill to pay to get back on the road.

thanks for any help or insignt you can give me.

Taylor

heres some pics for visual refrence.

 

wow...umm did you happen to tell them to give you back the parts? i'd be interested in seein some more pics or possibly seeing if QEC here at the Tech Center would want to look at it and do some root-cause analysis on it.....i have never seen a rearend do that...did you happen to pull the cover and see what all was missing? lol

 

No, auctually i didnt. I Had a complete full truck with all our travel stuff, we were supposed to be gone for 2 weeks. I just didnt have room to put it in the bed. I did take the cover off, and im not completely farmiliar with ram rear ends, but it didnt seem like anything was missing, just from my looking.

When this all happened, the first thing i thought was that i broke a universal joint, or something like that, because the driveshaft was just hanging on the ground. but as soon as i got a flash light i saw the gear sticking through the bottom and knew i was ****ed.

There had to be some tremendous force to make that gear slam through the bottom of the housing, it was over 3/8 thick at that point.

I wish i would have taken a pic with the cover off, or brought the rear end home with me to take pics.


Taylor

 

Did you have the factory anti slip? The clips on those have been known to come loose and could possibly have damaged your gears, leading to the grenade.

 

Im not positive if i did or not. I know i had the super classy one wheel peel, and i had the 3.55 gears. lol


from your guys opinoins....

should i be towing that load with OD on or OD off?

and could that have had ANYTHING to do with the failure?


thanks


Taylor

 

holy **** dude! Thats nasty! you should be pulling with OD off but thats more for your tranny than your rear end. If you have 3.55 and one wheel peel you dont have LSD. when you get the rear end fix i'd suggest a bigger gear ratio for pulling though. Sorry bout the rear end man..

 

My buddy owns a rear end shop he told me keep a close eye on the newer, 9.25 dodge rear ends and change the rear end fluid once a years herepairs alot of 9.25 dodge rear end he said there junk more or less they are not bullet proff like the older ones.

Iplanning to change out the gears and carrior to a aftermarket They are stronger and last much longer than thelighter cheeper lessoverhead coststock set up I know Dodge trying to turn a better buck but come on the rear end should out last the rest of the truck.

But I will do this when my wife lets me save up some cash Ha Ha.

But every time I get some extra cash she needs it for something else she just knows I have some extra cash stuck away sad thing we have diffrent bank acounts I can win.

 

...that is serious bro...get better gears (4.10's 0r 4.56's)...or our stock 3.92's.... and use amsoil diff fluid...that will keep the heat down...

 

crap....that sucks really bad. Your not under an extended warranty by any chance are you? Looks like some pretty extensive damage. looks to me like that axle is shot. did the drive shaft and yoke break free also? noticed its not visible in the pics.

 

There have been lots of post lately of drive shaft failures. Maybe that was the stem of your problem? Did you have an aluminum or steeldriveshaft? One piece or two?