I
I spent a long, cold night in the desert. At race mile 110, the female spline in the slip joint of the front driveshaft stripped out, leaving me with an open driveline. With the quadratrac, if you loose front or rear drive, the transfer case acts like an open diff. I thought I had lost the trans. The front shaft looked fine.
I passed word to Leavitt's Bronco that I was down. We are one of the last classes to start, so there weren't many cars behind me. I started to get the sense that I was going to be spending the night by myself, so fortunately, I started to collect wood for fire. One small problem was I had no matches or a lighter, so I had to crack open a fuel line to wet a paper towel, that I had zip tied to a stick. I had a piece of wire in my repair bag, so I vice-gripped one end to the positive battery terminal, and sparked away until it lit.
I flipped my hood upside down, and used it as my bed, instead of lying in the gravel.
Around 9 am the next day, a helicopter appeared, circled once at 30-40 ft. then dropped down next to my Blazer. He was sent to find me. He offered a ride out, but I wasn't going to leave the Blazer. He left a six pack of Fiji water and three small bags of Doritos.
I climbed under the Blazer one more time, and was staring at the bottom of the truck, when I reached out and grabbed the front driveshaft. It had a surprising amount of play. I thought it might have blown the front r &p given how much I could rotate the shaft. I took the axle side of the driveshaft off, where it became clear what had happened. I tried the spare shaft, but it required a different yoke on the transfer case. I put everything away, got in the car, twisted the knob that locks the t-case, and drove off in 2wd,a day late.
