Disappearing act........

..........A sad sight for me on Wednesday


Well it wasn't a real good day at all........Stung by a Bee that flew in the window at 6 am on my way to pick up the first container for the day............found two flat tyres on the trailer on the on the return trip to deliver said container at about 8:30 am...............then at 10:30 am as I crested this little rise the truck started to shudder so I backed it off and it settled down so I stoked it up again and.........BANG!!!!!........I looked down and watched the gearstick disappear down through the hole in the floor, went for the clutch.......hard as a rock........so I reached for the key ..........too late shes stalled anyway.

Well I climbed out and looked under the truck from just behind the cab and found the starter motor hanging down.......thought oh F#$* it's fallen off........walked aroung the other side and looked in at the starter and found that I could have replaced the clutch if I felt the urge. so I rang the boss....got a tow truck etc. Then some twit came along and drove clean over two of my three triangles, mongrel didn't even slow down.So now I have a wonderful 2 weeks in the old SAR.



You can just see in the last photo where the drive wheels locked up.

Now heres what happened..............the input shaft on the gearbox snapped in such a way that it forced the gearbox and engine apart and in the process totally destroyed the flywheel housing as it was made of aluminium, which in turn removed the engine mounts from the equasion and dropped the lot on the fuel tank cross bars.

Boss is ok about it...........not exactly something that you can predict...........but atleast it didn't take out anything important.......like me or someone else.

Best part about wednesday was that it all got better from there..........well it couldn't have gotten any worse.....could it ???

whats you address? i'll send ya over a beer!
or would you prefer a bex and a lie down!...
What a day! as you say couldn't get much worse!
Thanks for sharing that!
i feel pritty bloody good now!
Take it easy ol mate
regards
chocs

Werkhorse, we all have those sort of days occasionally but thank goodness they don't come around too often. I'm typing that with my fingers crossed

It sounds like it was just a bit of bad luck that happens occasionally. It's just as well that Swishy is otherwise occupied this weekend as I can imagine his comments. Not only were you carted away by a Volvo but you made slightly disparaging comments about an SAR!

I hope the next few days don't turn out too bad.

Cheers, Vic

Not only were you carted away by a Volvo

I was hoping they'd bring out the old B seires Leader and tow it back in. Now that would have made it all somewhat more pleasurable.

but you made slightly disparaging comments about an SAR!

Disparaging............no way in hell......never in a million years........That truck might look a tad rough but you can bet your left nut that it'll be the truck that a) comes to the rescue or b) outlasts them all and most likely both.

If it were human, I might think of marrying it.........

Disparaging............no way in hell......never in a million years........


Sorry Werkhorse, when you said a wonderful 2 weeks I thought you were being a bit sarcastic; that's the trouble with email and blogs, you can't always tell whether the other person is being humorous or not.

I would never malign an SAR myself.

O.K. .. what kind of crap gearbox, or Chinese parts are involved .. for a transmission input shaft to snap off clean and then carry out drivetrain destruction on a major scale??
Inquirin minds need ta no, an' all that ....
I've been around trucks and machinery for over 45 yrs, and I've never heard or seen such a thing before.
I've known tailshafts to go seriously out of balance .. that then fractures the clutch housing .. and the gearbox has parted company with the motor ....
I've known clutches to blow up and take clutch housings apart ....
I've known engines to blow up and drop their guts all over the road .. which sometimes takes gearbox parts with them ..

But .. I've never known any vehicle to snap an input driveshaft clean off, and then have it create destruction on the scale described ....

Geez that was new truck when you got it !

Well It's got me bugga'd too I've never seen it happen like that before, But the mechanic said thats what happened.

Now, and this is just my thoughts on it, I picked up a few, well a bloody lot actually, loose parts scattered up the road whilst waiting for the tow and had a close look. I reckon the throwout bearing let rip and a large chunk fell down between the flywheel and housing. Whether the shaft went first of the bearing I don't know but I can't imagine it was just the shaft.

If I get a chance tomorrow I'll call past and get a few pics of the offending chunks.


Scummy........well technically it was.

I actually did the pre delivery check/service when it was new. Since then it has been repossessed from the first owner, crashed into a bridge by the second one, since my boss has owned it he has had about 4-5 drivers steerers on it and then I got it at 800,000kms. It now has 1,010,876kms on it....well that was when I left it on the side of the road....not bad for a bloody palstic truck that has spent most of its life as a logger then a wharf rat and now a sideloader tug around town.

Mind you the SAR has about 4,000,000kms on it and runs rings around the Sterling as far as reliability goes, I went and got it the other day and it hadn't ben used for about 3 weeks, hit the key and hasn't missed a beat since. Altho It could use some air bags and cross diff locks she does the job no fuss at all.......just swing wide and pray around the corners...LOL

I have seen one screw the input shaft off right at the clutch brake. It was a 3600 s-line. Got towed in from Yamba, the driver reckons he pulled up at the parking bay and when he took off he had no drive. When i pulled the box out the shaft stayed in the clutch and there was metal everywhere. There was also teeth missing off top gear counter shafts. It looked like the throw out bearing had seized. I say lack of mainteance was the main problem and steerers with eyes that look like this if you know what i mean. It belonged to MPM

Thank bloody goodness that there are bosses who have to pay for those things to get fixed.... :-[ :-[
it would be a sick day if it was coming out of the house keeping :'(

/me