370z Driveshaft Melted
 

Two nights ago...I was driving and went to drop my clutch...and I heard a very bad sound of mechanical things failing and was like :facepalm: . So I towed it to the car dealership assuming that my transmission or clutch had just failed....

They called me today to tell me that my driveshaft had melted....turns out that my Y-pipe was left disconnected and the exhaust gases had been exposed to the underneath of the car...and the heat from the exhaust melted the driveshaft until its structural integrity was lost, and the driveshaft has literally torqued itself apart...

I will take pictures when I get to the dealership.

Lol how were you driving around with a leaked exhaust and did not know?

In for pictures though. This is interesting.

Umm.... Our drive shaft is carbon fiber, isn't it? You know... the stuff they use on the nose cone of nasa space shuttles for re-entry into orbit? That melted?

It isn't 100% carbon iirc.

Doh!

In for pics. Something isn't adding up.

They use carbon-carbon on the space shuttle. Not exactly the same thing.

Im curious to see the damage.

But the driveshaft is carbon-fiber composite.

:( ugg,,,, That bill is going to be ugly.

True enough, but I don't think our exhaust gases are on the same magnitude as the heat generated from the atmosphere, either. Just hard to believe the shaft can melt from an exhaust leak.

carbon-carbon is a ceramic like material while carbon fiber is not. The two materials are are very different with the only real similarity being that they are both carbon based.

As far as the driveshaft is concerned, my guess is that the prolonged heat exposure weakened the resin allowing the driveshaft to twist.

This is a first. Curious how this could really happen. The car would have sounded different and gotten someone's attention. pix pix pix.

I saw this on AZSH! I hope you somehow got the warranty to cover this.

I've always been under the impression that the CF driveshaft construction was very similar to fiberglass - fibers in an epoxy-type matrix. If that is indeed true, I don't think you melted the driveshaft. My guess is that the mechanic was just imprecise in describing the damage. But I'm no expert of CF.

Subbed for more info. I would love to see some pics.

It's similar to the material used in the radiator frame support.
Like others have said, i'm surprised OP didn't hear something different about the exhaust tone...