Transmission Woes

[tonypai]

I was on an on ramp to the freeway, in first gear, gave her a little gas which led to a bang. Immediately I lost power, limped to the side of the road. My guess is the clutch since I can shift into any gear with engaging the clutch. When the tow truck arrived I saw the right axle hanging down and picked up a sheared bolt.

What would cause such an explosion? Thoughts?

I'll post pictures later.

Thanks in advance.

Tony

[euro911sc]

The 'bang' may have been a bolt flying into the underbelly at high velocity... or... was the shaft broken? CV? You may just need soem new half shafts/CVs. Fairly easy to do, in theory. Getting the bolts off after years of being in the trailing arms can be troublesome... just clean out the heads VERY well so the hex key fits nice and deep.

-Michael

[Jim Sims]

Loose and then fractured CV joint bolts. Probably nothing to do with transmission per se. Have the CV joints been disconnected and reconnected recently (engine and transmission drop)?

[KTL]

Yep. Not likely to be a clutch problem. You had some loose CV bolts which finally let go of the axle. The loud bang you heard was the axle probably hitting your exhaust system and the throttle linkage (if loose axle is on driver side) so you may need to source a replacement bellcrank and pivot pin for the transaxle case.

May not require a new shaft at all. Just some new bolts and likely have to extract some broken ones from the trans. output flange.

[tonypai]

Thanks guys!

I'll let you know what I find.