Last night on my way home from work, I pulled up at the last set of lights before the short cruise home, lights to green, clutch out and nothing, except a rattle from the rear right.

No prizes for guessing that the one of the uni joints had sheared, come loose or something similar, what I hadn't expected was to see the drive shaft had actually popped out from the stut side!

In the many years I've been reading messages on this site of knowledge, I have never read of this happening.

Have ordered 2 uni's today and will proceed with a re-build over the next day or 2.

Just had to be different, dinya mate!

Will

Good to know Mike ... you are right we seldom hear of failures of this type in the 240-Z's. They have a well earned reputation for rock solid reliability.

Nonetheless, they are now 30+ years old... and it would most likely be a very good idea if we all started checking the bolts/nuts in our drive-lines, as well as everything under our cars. Anything less than proper torque - and those old nuts/bolts can get tore up pretty fast.

Carl B.

An Update....

I had a sleepless night thinking about the root cause of this and after a daylight inspection, it appears that the stub axle retaining nut has worked its way loose and disappeared off the threaded axle allowing the half shaft to slide off the spline.

A quick lookup in the parts catelogue and a phone call confirmed availability of the nut and retaining washer which will be picked up this PM.

I had decided to fit the nut with the rear suspension still in place, does anyone know any reason why I shouldn't?

MOM

Just an update and then time to close the thread.

Close inspection after removal of the driveshaft revelled the stub axle shaft had actually broken (snapped) off due to fatigue.

I'm off hunting around for a rear left strut assembly now......