Help! What's going on down there?

[ValiantBandit]

I figured I'd post this in here since this is a drivetrain part of the forum so here goes:

I have a 1976 Plymouth Valiant slant 6 A904 tranny that ran great up to April 4th. My wife and I were on our way to the Hoover Dam when I noticed something peculiar going on with my car. While I was driving, it felt like my car was towing something instead of just crusing along at 60MPH. I've gotten bad gas out here that seems to mimic the same problem so I just thought to myself "Oh it's just a bad batch of gas." Yeah, no it wasn't. About 5 minutes later I heard a squeak that sounded like a belt sqeak, a pop and *pouf* all of a sudden the car wasn't driving anymore! It was still running normally, but she wasn't driving. I pulled over on the highway and looked under the car and noticed that part of the sliding yoke was now exposed, about 4" worth of it was exposed.

I instantaneously freaked out and thought horrific things happened inside of the transmission and the car was a goner so she sat in my garage untouched since yesterday.

Following my brother in law's advice, I removed the whole driveshaft, started the car, put her in drive and sure enough, the output shaft was freely spinning, even in reverse. Well I was happy about that since now I know it's not the transmission that's at fault.

I then took a look at the whole driveshaft and was quite perplexed as the sliding yoke looked to be in normal condition. The teeth inside of the shaft were perfect, the u joints looked perfect on both sides.

I figured maybe the yoke just popped out, so today I re-installed the driveshaft and STILL the car doesn't move and I didn't hear the transmission engage in any gear.

What in the world is going on with my car??!?

 

[fishy68]

Not sure what to say about 4" of the slip yoke being exposed unless someone cut the driveshaft too short sometime in the past but your brother in laws method of testing the trans. proved nothing whatsoever. Just because the output shaft was spinning while it had no load on it doesn't mean it'll work when the driveshaft is installed and trying to pull a 3000+ lb. hunk of metal. If it won't move with the driveshaft installed and you don't even feel like it engages into gear it sounds like the trans. took a crap.

 

[daliant]

Check you leaf springs and U bolts to make sure the rear end is still where it should be, sounds like something broke and the rear end shifted which might have pulled the yoke off the splines in the trans. You shouldn't have 4" of the slip yoke hanging out of the transmission. Driveshafts dont just pop out for no reason.