D44 Ring & Pinion went "Boom"

**Beefy** · May 24th, 2012

Well, ran Poison Spider and everything was great. Fun trail!

On the highway headed to the other side of town for BFE area to play and a few miles out of town I started hearing a nasty sound at about 50MPH. Pulled over, crawled under, John (Clutch) and Kory crawled under and we couldn't figure out what the hell it was, except for the fact that it was somewhere in the drive train. The noise would get worse when the drive train was under strain (more gas meant more noise), but it would still make the noise when rolling in neutral and in reverse (although not as loud).

So, John knew of a guy in town that didn't rip people off and I limped back into town to the guy's shop. Within a few minutes the guy knew exactly what it was. Once he tore it apart the next day, this is what it looked like:

Sounds like it wasn't anything that I did. Possibly a bad install from what it sounded like. The guy said everything was loose in the rear end and it was obvious it had been for a while. Had to re-shim when he installed a new R&P, new bearings, etc. I feel pretty lucky it happened where it did to be honest. Could've been much worse! And, it didn't mess with the ARB. Got the last R&P in 4.56 that was in town too. Missed a full day of wheeling, but the next day I went out and ran Hell's Revenge. Was a blast! Expensive repair though!

Didn't see that one coming. Oh well, it's part of the game.

Again, very big thanks to John for helping me out with the shop.

Thanks to Kory for sticking around through the BS and to get the part. Of course, thanks to Amanda for putting up with me and the problems.

**Kory** · May 24th, 2012

My Moab carnage was squat compared to this. You took it quite excellent IMO. Just sucks we both lost a day of wheeling. Oh well we will make up for it next year!

**Michael4rnr** · May 24th, 2012

Glad it was a quick repair and didn't take long and cut into wheeling.

**Jim** · May 24th, 2012

Bummer on the break - nice pic of it.

**Beefy** · May 24th, 2012

Jim Williamson previously posted:

**Popsgarage** · May 25th, 2012

Ouch! At least you didn't grenade it. And you're really lucky it did happen where it did. Could have been way, way worse.

May 25th, 2012

Shelling gears sucks....

I don't even remember how many gear sets have become metal junk over the years, but two times stand out:

LaDawn was driving my heap on Mill Creek loop. We we partway up the last knarly hill and heard a 'BANG'.
"Oh s***!", she said,"What was THAT?".
"Probably gears or transfer case", I said, "Pull over the first chance you get and I'll see if we are spewing fluid."

Well, no fluid and a long way to go to the top of the hill. I knew that if we made the top of the hill, we could coast down to the pavement.

"Keep driving", I said..

By the time we finally got to the top of the hill, even though I had attached a huge magnet I carry (for just this reason) to the bottom of the diff to hold down the pieces, it sounded like someone was hitting the underside of the rig with a sledge hammer....I had stripped about 6 teeth off of the ring gear.

Another time in a Blazer, the rear gears went and blew a fist sized hole through the differential. Talk about a loud noise! You could look right inside. Figuring that all the damage that could possibly be done was done and being about 7 miles from the house, I just said screw it and drove the rest of the way home...

**Java** · May 25th, 2012

That sucks, Jeff! I'm glad you got it taken care of so quickly. You guys sure did the carnage this time around!!

**glacierpaul** · May 25th, 2012

D to the Damn!! Cool it got fixed and not towed!

**Beefy** · May 25th, 2012

Definitely could have been worse! Figured I'd share the misery.

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