Trap Star

At the request of another member I'm posting my story. If you have any ideas as to what may have caused this or have had a driveshaft failure please post up. This could have been MUCH worse and I consider myself to be pretty lucky since I wasn't injured. The guys on motorcycles behind me were very lucky as well, a large chunk of the driveshaft came loose and nearly hit one of them. Hopefully with a little input from the community this situation can be prevented future.

Car Info
-97 S14, original 5 speed
-S13 SR20det, mostly stock
-J30 LSD
-Stock S14 driveshaft


What happened
I was driving north on I-95 a little south of St. Augustine, Florida. I was not beating on the car or anything, just cruising around 80-85mph on my way back to Atlanta. The whole thing happened pretty quickly. My car started to rumble quite badly but before I could do anything I heard a loud explosion. I immediately dropped the car into neutral. I then made my way across 3 lanes of traffic while being sprayed in the face with small metal shavings. There was a horrible grinding noise which turned out to be part of the driveshaft spinning and cutting through the transmission tunnel.

It was a stock s14 driveshaft and it came apart at the middle joint. The bolts at the differential were still tight and the input shaft was still in the transmission. The transmission wasn't damaged. It cut through on both sides of the trans tunnel right at the rear bolt for the front seats. I'm 6'4" so my seat position puts my hip right around that bolt. I truly believe that if I had not dropped the car into neutral it would have continued to cut through the car and then me. I'm really not sure what caused it but here's a few ideas I've come up with:

1) Improper install (I don't think this was the issue as the car had run without issue prior to this)

2) Faulty/weak driveshaft

3) Damage of some kind. The car sat VERY low and I had high-centered it on a couple speed bumps. Both high-centers had taken place at least 1 year prior to the failure.


Even though this seems to be an isolated incident I'm still running 1-piece driveshafts from now on (got the d/s for my S13 from Z1). At least that way if something happens it will tear up a part of the car that isn't so close to me. Again, please post if this has happened to you or you've witnessed a failure before. This was pretty scary and I hope it never happens to myself or anyone else ever again.

Here's some pictures of the damage:

Exhaust


Passenger side (sorry for the blurry pic)


Driver side

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86 300zx/90 240sx/97 240sx/96 LS400/03 350z
-Shake N' Break Racing-