What is causing my Dakars to become misaligned ?

50/50

 

If it is actually broken , how dangerous is it to drive ?

I am going out of town tommorow and my wife will be using my truck .

 

I've sheared them on full size trucks but it was from hitting fairly unmovable objects at speed , plus aren't those dakar pins a foot long ? (exaggeration of course)

I would think most the leafs would be shifting some if sheared but ya never know

1 leaf shifting (the same leaf) maybe not such a big deal, 2 leafs somethings up, didn't even think to ask if maybe broken leafs also

 

As far as driving it, if its been like this for awhile & shes not hauling anything or offroading I'd say she'd be alright if she really needs to just get from point A to point B & back again.....

 

Doug ,

I looked for broken leafs and couldn't find any signs of breakage

If the pin is broken , how dangerous is it for her to drive ?

Edit : just saw your second post , thanks

 

Well I say "OK" Only because when mine sheared I had the usual leaf shifting like you'd suspect with this event but didn't actually check it out thoroughly for about a week & it sheared right at the end where the head drops into axle...

 

I'm only gone till Saturday night , so hopefully it's fine , not like she is an F1 driver or an offroader

 

HEY , just remembered that my rightside axle DID shift backwards a bit, you could see if both U bolts have shifted (angled forward or backwards) or measure the left & right side axle closest to the wheel to a fix location on frame (cross member maybe)


EDIT: Deal with it when yya get back.....

 

Thanks Doug

If it falls apart on her before I get back I'll have my solicitor forward the lawsuit details on to you for review

 

noted & reported...

 

OK .

So today we got it on the hoist , disconnected the rear shock , dropped the axle , and everything looked fine .

The centre pin is not broken , it was fully engaged in the axle hole , the nut had not backed off at all .

The centre pin was pretty rusty but that didn't suprise me at all .

The only odd thing that we found was that , as soon as we seperated the leaf pack centre pin from the axle location hole , the leaf pack wanted to move about 1" toward the tire and it took considerable leverage to re-align it in order to put it all back together .

Not sure what that is all about , maybe the shackle mount is bent and this is putting a " roll " through the leaf pack , front to rear , and that is resulting in the leaf misalignment ?

IDK

Anyways , not sure if it was just a bunch of rock grit grinding away in the pack or U bolt mount , but the noise is gone for now .

 

Has anyone with a bent shackle mount had a similar misalignment issue ?

 

No bashing , but I ran some pretty heavy firewood loads before I got longer bumpstops

 

Have the axle shims helped with whatever you put them in there to help (assuming driveling vibration)? If not, how about just removing them to take that out of the equation?

 

Not a bad idea

Thanks

 

Oz my dakars make a clunk too. Only after I flex them a good bit. They'll do it for a few days then quit. I thought it may be a dry bushing. I never took it apart to look though.

 

Thanks

 

I've never noticed if they were out of alignment. I'll have to check that out.