Last Saturday I went to a local sandpit, was hoping to shred a bit and get some video. I put it in first gear, started rolling and I saw the left rear wheel stop.... what the?
I was into the run all of 30 seconds.
So come to find out I wedged a rock between the inner wheel and the knuckle and thoroughly mangled my CVD.
Let me just say my MIPs have about a million miles on them and the basic design is great. So this is not an attempt to bash MIP. In fact my truck would never have moved without them, it's a 3906 which came with the spindly original drives that twisted with even stock power.
My CVDs have been straightened countless times, just with a hammer and a flat hard surface, but it has gotten tiresome. And with this last episode I had a simple choice- buy new ones or try to come up with something else.
Problem with that is not the cost, but that the original Emaxx CVDs were about .1" too short because my A arm pivots are out that much further than the drive cups. So all this time I have been using the ragged edge of engagement with the drive cups. Ok most of the time, except when something overstresses the A arms and the dogbone falls out of the cup.
Then when the arm straightens out, the bone usually doesn't fall back in and that resulted in my CVDs being severely bent many times. And before I had aluminum knuckles, this would often be enough force to pop a ball out of the knuckle- and that is just annoying
So first, the carnage hehehe