I wonder what i broke (lost rear drive in 5mt)

[Bosco]

I'm just looking for Ideas.
This is on a BEATER field/woods car that sees nothing but mud/snow/dirt track rallying-jackassery on my friend's property. (the "First Gear test track" as we call it)
So Obviously this is HEAVILY abused with lots and lots of red-lining, wheel-spinning, clutch burning, drifting, donuts, reverse flicks, minor tree damage, etc etc etc.
It's a 98 legacy with a 97 motor and 92 5mt trans/rear end.

Long story short = Out there messing around, stopped the car for a minute, went to go again, and no more rear drive. initially felt like the clutch just disappeared, but we found we do have front drive still, it just was going almost nowhere because of the snow/ice/mud situation.
Upon further inspection we find that we now have only fwd.
No grinding, rattling, thunking, or any strange noises at all... just no rear drive.

We'll be taking it apart sooner or later and swapping in some more high mileage junk parts to keep the fun going.

Do you think we cooked the all important viscous coupling do-hickey thingy? that's all i can think of that might go so silently...I KNOW we have certainly been abusing it, but it also seemed to go quite suddenly which makes me wonder...I'd think that the rear drive would slowly disappear from cooking the fluid, but I dunno.
Other ideas/experiences anyone?

[bmxkelowna]

id check out the rear diff / axles if there was no really bad sounds
anything tranny related would be been a lot more noticeable

[canubaru]

on an auto trans, when you have torque bind you can remove the drive shaft to the rear diff and drive around in FWD. i have heard if you try this on a 5 speed you NO wd. i don't understand this and i may be wrong but it has something to do with the viscous center diff being an ''open'' diff i think. please correct me if i'm wrong.

so i would look for a bad rear diff or axle. jack up one side of the car, both wheels and see if they will both ''drive'' then.

[Bosco]

Thought I'd wrap this thread up.
Broke the axle stub off the rear diff.
We repaired it and are still beating this car to death.





something else we recently broke in an interesting fashion...

[bmxkelowna]

told ya it was something in the rear end! lol

[n2x4]

hahaha - keep on beating! Good work.

[Legacy777]

That's quite the beating!!