subfloor@centurytrans

A few weeks ago at the track I felt something snap on my second pass along with a noticeable vibration afterwards. I originally thought it was in the transmission as it would growl quite loudly but only in Drive.



Started pulling everything apart this morning and noticed the trans and differential would move quite easily without the motor moving along with it. Had my wife wiggle everything so I could investigate with a flashlight and ended up finding this towards the front:



As a frame of reference, this is what it should look like:



As dumb luck would have it though, I thankfully have a spare as I picked up a running 6L80E, torque tube and 2.56 differential from Craigslist for $100 a couple weeks ago.

Pretty strange, huh?

HOXXOH

Check your motor mounts, since all those wheelstands are taking a toll on the driveline.

subfloor@centurytrans

Already did and they seem to be fine. If my motor mounts are shot I usually end up having my mid-pipe separate from the over the axle pipe on the driver side.

Omega Doom

damn was this the original torque tube?

subfloor@centurytrans

Yeah, about 70K street miles and several thousand passes.

Omega Doom

well at we all know thats a stock part that can take some abuse

drewz06

Holy crap bro! glad it didn't totally fail on ya.... one good thing about not having to use a drive shaft with universals!

drew

subfloor@centurytrans

After disconnecting the transmission and differential I was then able to just pull the torque tube away from the motor with one hand.

If I had to guess as to what happened, I'm thinking that whatever came loose inside started acting like a saw and effectively cut the tube in two.

drewz06

well I hate to say it but that's one cool as hell failure mode!

madmatt9471

WOW! That's pretty wild

Thanks,Matt

subfloor@centurytrans

As I ran my fastest time ever in the car, at least in the 1/8th mile. I was hooking like crazy which was surprising as we started running while the temperature was still in the mid 40s. The car ran really strong which was a major relief because I originally thought I also heard an engine noise when the torque tube first broke.

My previous best was 6.286 on my 9.933 run back in 2018, but I went 6.284 on my first pass on Sunday.




I ran 6 times in total and they all would have easily been 9 second passes had we been running 1/4 mile.