The driveshaft is truly an underrated part of a vehicle. The amount of stress that one puts up with day to day under basic driving is a engineering marvel. A driveshaft in a heavy vehicle, such as this 2003 Dodge Ram, is doing a lot of work to move the weight of the vehicle, and using a decently built up 5.7 Hemi to turn the shaft simply amplifies those stresses. In this case, the rear u-joint failed at 6200 RPM, which shot the driveshaft clean out of the truck with all the grace and civility of a pipe bomb. The shaft ends up in pieces scattered around the bay. Amazingly, the Ram managed to post 338 horsepower and 345 ft/lb of torque on this particular run, and other than the shaft itself, nothing else was damaged, not even the rear axle’s yoke. No word on whether or not anyone in the shop needed a change of clothes, however.
After seeing numerous videos where the driveshafts fail on chassis dynos, why have I not seen any sort of containment device built onto the dyno floor? Obviously it would have to be removable to get the vehicle on there.
I say this though, unless I’m running the vehicle I’m staying out blast radius when the dyno is running!
That guy in the video was so not surprised by the truck pitching it’s prop shaft.
Wonder how many neutral drops it took to make that thing finally pop?
Neutral drops arent possible with a stock pcm in this model truck… so none. Looks like a ujoint just failed.