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...

:worthless:

yeah i will wait until he post his pictures before i speak out my mind .. hehe

I am sure there are plenty of used ones in the junkyard.

Same here.

Where'd OP go

He melted away.

Ouch.. Hope the repair bill isn't to bad

I have the pics. Should I post them?

Obviously

i mean come on now, dont be a **** tease, obviously we want pictures

http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/07...44f2a19333.jpg
http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/07...5df1389ea8.jpg
http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/07...34b5b66fc6.jpg
http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/07...50cee8b24c.jpg
http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/07...f7284e2ffb.jpg

OP ended up trading in his car and getting a new 2015 Nismo.

There's your problem... Looks like your drive shaft had a paper towel roll as a core. :icon08:

Ouch!..

That's a cardboard tube inside the carbon fiber. It's for support when wrapping the carbon fiber into a tube. And for sound dampening.

That shaft looks like the ones at work that have failed. The carbon fiber driveshafts at work last about 3~4 years before they come apart.

Factory aluminum driveshafts have the cardboard tube too. I found out the easy way. Rockcrawling with my PowerWagon. :shakes head:

Yeah, I was just having a laugh. I doubt it would have helped much if they used extruded steel (thin gauge) as the core.

You should what some of the ones from work look like when they fail. :eek: 600hp electric motor, 14ft long, 8" diameter carbon fiber driveshaft, right angle gear reduction gearbox. Spinning a 18ft diameter, 10 blade up-draft fan. Most of the time. They fail in the winter. On another note. All of our street light poles at work are carbon fiber. :icon14:

I don't mean to start a flame-war or something, but dropping the clutch isn't really the best thing to do for the drive shaft. I have always been told by race car buddies that carbon driveshafts are a bit more fragile to begin with.