Yesterday, while on highway at about 70 mph, transfer case exploded. Picked up pieces of transfer case on highway. No vibrations before.... any advice? just found a low mile used transfer case complete for 950 bucks. Dont want it to happen again. And most of the failure was focused at the front yoke area. Rear driveshaft still connected and was able to limp it onto a trailer under its own power. 4" lift adjustable arms, je reel 1310 shafts on 35's. Set up this way since new. 2007 rubicon 2 door. 4 years, 54000 miles no problems until now.... Again any advice is appreciated.

 

I have nothing to offer as far as help but did notice any popping noises before hand when making low speed turns? I am having that now and I'm worried it's the transfer case.

 

From your description, you had most of the ingredients for the "recipe for disaster".

What was your front pinion angle? More than a few degrees?
It looks like you just hit the right speed, and probably had some cracks in the t-case.

 

sorry to hear about your t-case. i have personally seen it happen numerous times now and have even had one of my own t-cases come close. driveline vibrations are the number one cause of t-case cracks and you will see this happen mostly on JK's that are running 5.13 gears or higher and the break will almost always happen on the front half of the case. to prevent this, try to make sure that you have as little to no vibrations as possible coming from your front drive shaft. this may require you to reduce the amount of positive caster you have AND have your drive shaft re-balanced. another thing you need to do is make sure that the centering ball on the double cardin is properly greased and in good condition on a regular basis. a ceased double cardin is the number one reason for catestrophic breaks of the t-case.

 

thanks for the info. The gears are stock 4.10 and no noises or vibrations. Will check the front joint when its all pulled apart.

 

if i'm reading this correctly, you say that you've had these shafts on since 2007? just out of curiosity, when was the last time you serviced your centering ball and checked your u-joints? depending on your location and how much water/salt they see, checking/changing out u-joints once every 2 years is something you should be doing. could be that the bearing in one or more of the joints were toast and finally ceased up.

 

Had the rears replaced about 6 months ago for the first time. Fronts looked good, but we'll see when its all taken apart.

 

I think gears are helping this problem along, but I think the main culprit is these driveshafts, especially if you are removing the rear driveshaft vibration dampener to put on a aftermarket rear driveshaft. Regardless, if you are going to put on a double carden to single carden drive shaft that sucker better be angled pretty damn perfectly. You have to wonder why chrysler utilized the rzeppa in this application, maybe they actually got something right. Driveshafts when you buy them are balanced in one single plane. When you put them on your vehicle, the output shaft and the driveshaft are obviously not in the same plane. So no matter what, you will have oscillations, whether you hear or feel it or not. The only way to minimize this is keeping the single carden joint lined up perfectly to minimize the amount of vibrations the double carden has to eliminate. Both AEV and J reel also realized the benefit of the rzeppa, and unfortunatley so have you.

 

not all JK's came with dampeners on their t-cases.

there is no such thing as a "single cardin" - that would just be a u-joint and, you cannot make it angled "pretty damn perfectly" up front without causing your axle to have negative caster and that's a bad thing

regarding rzeppa joints, they are really strong but, they are not serviceable and expensive to replace. in fact, if you have a blown cv boot and or joint, you will need to replace your entire driveshaft as there is no replacement joint available. while i understand why chrysler might have gone this route, i don't know if i would agree with it and, based on what they are coming out with now in the mopar performance division, i think someone there may not agree with it too. also, i always found it odd that chrysler would choose to put an rzeppa joint at the t-case up front but NOT one at the pinion like they do in the rear. of course, we all know that they used a u-joint at the pinion flange up front.

regarding aev getting it right, i guess that means chrysler got it wrong by announcing that they will now be making and selling replacent u-joint style 1310 drive shafts



don't kid yourself - all cv joints can and will go bad regardless if they are a u-joint style or rzeppa type. they are parts that see a lot of movement and stress and time and a lack of maintenace will ruin both. the only real difference is that one is a lot cheaper to maintain and replace and the other requires you to get a whole new driveshaft.

 

A single u-joint is a cardan joint.
That's why the double cardan is called double cardan. It's two single cardans hooked together.