I'M SORRY, GRANDMA: 1986 Cressida moneypit (I mean, project...)

[kibur]

last piece to the puzzle has been acquired.


can't wait to assemble everything and install the AR-5. very excited to do so, I don't know if anyone else with an x7 has ever ran this transmission. hopefully it goes without issue, but knowing how this build has went, I'm not expecting that to be the case.

I'd love to get this done before winter hits and the cold weather hits. though this is my last semester of school, it has been incredibly tedious and time consuming from the very beginning of it. definitely wish I was using this to relieve stress, instead of adding onto it by trying to find the time and money to fix it.

[kibur]

school is seriously killing me with time. I'm too busy to get back home and work on this, I don't even know if the parts have come in yet. however, I have an aisin ar-5 and almost all of the parts, with the exception of the driveshaft, are on their way in. pretty grateful to my father who was able to lend me the money for the time being on the parts to adapt the ar-5. my grandfather/his dad was the original owner of the car, and he has been under the weather lately. one of the main reasons I built this was to take him for a ride, as he used to be a mechanic and had all sorts of cool stuff - triumphs and old 911's to name a few. I'm hoping I can get the car back on the road by the middle of october, and this time, the first thing I will be doing is taking him for a ride, provided his health permits. it's so disappointing that this hack job of a shop has derailed my plans for this car, but I do not want this to become too much of a speed bump in the road.

Damn man, I just read your facebook post and how the company responded and they were downright rude. That guy is right though, they should have asked the necessary questions to get the job done right, not assumed all the specifics of you build and how your application would best be handled. They should have researched more about the application. All this comes down to whether or not they value the customer and I can clearly see that they do not. If I were you, I might go as far as to take them on in a small claims court for any damages done to your car and the tow fees and so on. They should have done their homework and done the job right. You don't go to do a blood transfusion with whatever blood usually works for other people, you need to ask the patient what their blood type is. good luck to you, my friend, I hope everything goes smoothy for you!

oh and nice cressy

thank you! yeah, it was incredibly aggravating to deal with. incredibly, ANOTHER one of their employees has commented recently to continue with the same rhetoric of, "oh you installed this wrong, we don't make bad driveshafts," and his typing was so ridiculously poor that a coherent argument, let alone a sentence, was barely formed.

but hey, the guy has snakebites in 2016, what can you expect from someone like that.

Did you check the pinion angles after lowering? http://www.wolferacecraft.com/pinionangle.aspx

Bad things can happen really fast with one piece shafts when trans/diff angles are out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmV4qwLfOMY

Hope you get back on the road soon! Love the 80's bricks!

thanks for the kind words. there was no crazy angle on the driveshaft whatsoever, not even comparable to the one in the video. I really don't think there was any way to describe this other than poor manufacturing.

[lowlvo]

Did you check the pinion angles after lowering? http://www.wolferacecraft.com/pinionangle.aspx

Bad things can happen really fast with one piece shafts when trans/diff angles are out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmV4qwLfOMY

Hope you get back on the road soon! Love the 80's bricks!

[Loaf31]

Damn man, I just read your facebook post and how the company responded and they were downright rude. That guy is right though, they should have asked the necessary questions to get the job done right, not assumed all the specifics of you build and how your application would best be handled. They should have researched more about the application. All this comes down to whether or not they value the customer and I can clearly see that they do not. If I were you, I might go as far as to take them on in a small claims court for any damages done to your car and the tow fees and so on. They should have done their homework and done the job right. You don't go to do a blood transfusion with whatever blood usually works for other people, you need to ask the patient what their blood type is. good luck to you, my friend, I hope everything goes smoothy for you!

oh and nice cressy

[kibur]

That is awful how they treated you, wish it could of turned out better. cars can always be fixed, glad you are unharmed

Ah man, sorry to hear about the woes..

that's all that matters at this point. I'm still very glad no one was hurt. sadly with this hobby i've come to expect dealing with people who are hacks and/or scumbags. it's funny how much i've been through with this car in particular because of the actions of others.

Hi,
Nice car !
I'm totally fan of these brick design, and this is a Toyota. Winning combo !

Now, it's a shame for your drive shaft issue.

If i'm correct, i calculate that @80 mph, with 205 60 15 tires (at the rear wheels) with 4,10 ratio diff, your driveshaft should run at 450 rpm.

Maybe you can ask them the control report to check if they have tested your shaft at least at this speed ?

Corporate carpet bomb them. Send a well written email with your concerns and complaints to the owner and CC every high level manager you can find at the business. If that gets you know where, threaten litigation for the parts needed for repairing the car, the driveshaft, and your time(if you couldn't make it to work due to a damaged car).

You can go to small claims court(won't need a lawyer and it won't be dragged out over more than a few days from filing to the appearance). Collect evidence(the driveshaft, damage to the car) and get written statements from professionals about how and why the driveshaft failed.

I've been thinking about trying to get in contact with the owner, but it's kind of hard when the person who answers the phone there is someone who laughed in your face about the fact your driveshaft exploded at 80mph. However, their responses to me show me there is no chance they plan to resolve this conflict.All of their responses have been claiming that since they have been in the business for 40+ years, there is no way they can be wrong. They have used that exact excuse countless times in a manner to devalue my encounter, which is well-documented and backed up by plenty of pictures.

I have posted reviews on a few different outlets, including Facebook, Google and Yelp. An employee of theirs, the curly headed guy that I described in my last post in this thread, has commented on their Google and Facebook pages with 5-star reviews praising how great his company is, and how well they know their stuff.

They pointed the finger at me in a variety of different ways, claiming I wasn't calm or polite during the encounter. Well, lets think about this for a second. The driveshaft that they had manufactured exploded on me while I was going 80mph. Thankfully, myself nor my passengers were injured, but we were stranded on the side of the road all day in a car that hadn't even finished its first tank of gas. When I was asking for a very simple resolution to such a shit situation - make me a new driveshaft on the house and make it the right way, or refund me the cash that I had paid for it - they literally scoffed at me. So yeah, I was going to be a little unhappy with that. They also claimed up and down that the failure was due to an improper install, but if we're being honest here - I've been doing this swap alongside of one of my close friends, who is an ASE certified mechanic, and we've checked over everything on my car more times than I can count, hence why it took forever to finally see "completion" - which is when both of us considered the car strong enough to see the road and be reliable. No one could have foresaw the driveshaft failing in such a violent matter, in such a short time after completion.

They eventually noted that I should have brought the vehicle, which at the time was a disassembled non-running project, to them in order to have achieved the proper measurements for the driveshaft. Their EXACT QUOTE was; "Unfortunately, my crystal ball doesn't work, so without seeing your vehicle, I can't very well diagnose the problem. I feel your pain in the situation and feel bad that you lost the money. "

But they're experts who have been in the business for more than 40 years, right?

The whole encounter can be read here.

[EuroJDM]

Hi,
Nice car !
I'm totally fan of these brick design, and this is a Toyota. Winning combo !

Now, it's a shame for your drive shaft issue.

If i'm correct, i calculate that @80 mph, with 205 60 15 tires (at the rear wheels) with 4,10 ratio diff, your driveshaft should run at 450 rpm.

Maybe you can ask them the control report to check if they have tested your shaft at least at this speed ?

[kevvy_dawg]

Ah man, sorry to hear about the woes..

[rice4life]

Corporate carpet bomb them. Send a well written email with your concerns and complaints to the owner and CC every high level manager you can find at the business. If that gets you know where, threaten litigation for the parts needed for repairing the car, the driveshaft, and your time(if you couldn't make it to work due to a damaged car).

You can go to small claims court(won't need a lawyer and it won't be dragged out over more than a few days from filing to the appearance). Collect evidence(the driveshaft, damage to the car) and get written statements from professionals about how and why the driveshaft failed.

[ExpelI]

That is awful how they treated you, wish it could of turned out better. cars can always be fixed, glad you are unharmed

[kibur]

What a shock. The shop who made the driveshaft claimed absolutely no responsibility for the driveshaft failure. The shop is Delaware Valley Truck Service, located at 5101 Unruh Ave in Philadelphia, PA.I dealt with three staff members. One was a man named John, who was more than kind considering the situation at hand. However there were two other men, who did not bear name tags, who were beyond condescending, rude and flat-out unprofessional.

The worst offender was an older man, I believe his name was Woody because I spoke to him on the phone. He was as condescending and awful to deal with in person as he was on the phone. He was the one who told me "there's no way a little 300hp Toyota did that", and continued to stick by that mantra. At first, he gave me a hard time for paint missing where the driveshaft hit the crossmember after it had failed. With X7 chassis cars, you have to route the driveshaft through the rear crossmember. This had nothing to do with why the driveshaft failed.

Another man, a younger guy with curly brown hair, basically kept telling me how the failure was my fault. He kept bragging about how the shop had $50,000 machines and there was no way the mistake was on their end, that it was a failure due to how I installed it. I knew this wasn't the case. He claimed that the slip yolk popped out of the transmission due to an improper install, and continued to blame me for the install being wrong, despite the fact that the slip yolk is embedded in the rear of the transmission. He told me that if he made me a new driveshaft, and the same thing happened, that it would be my fault, and implied once again that this was my fault and this is how I asked for the driveshaft to be made. I did not see him balance the first driveshaft, nor did I provide any emphasis on how it should be made - if it had been made properly, it would not have failed. Plain and simple - I took their word for it because I believed they were experts and because of that, I was not expecting it to fail.

At this point, Woody became downright rude. He kept laughing and smirking, which I became pretty annoyed with. I told him to wipe the smirk off his face, because there isn't anything funny about a failure this serious. Not only was I out the cost of the transmission, clutch and driveshaft, I now have to spend money in order to get the exhaust fixed, as well as adapting the new transmission. Furthermore, someone could have been seriously injured due to how violent the failure was. The money was obviously disappointing to lose, and the damaged parts were a bummer too, but it was most important that no one was injured, and furthermore, to have someone make light of how serious the failure of the part and the potential for injury was, is beyond unprofessional and completely uncalled for.

The shop refused to provide any sort of a refund, and even offered to discount me on a new driveshaft, but I told them there was no way that I was going to be using them again when these were the results of the first driveshaft. It was unbelievable to deal with a business that was so unprofessional and careless towards the mistakes they made. Clearly, they knew there was an issue if they were going to give me a discount towards a new driveshaft, I just don't understand how they could be so calloused as to laugh at a paying customer who clearly was not treated to quality service.

Here is a photo of what is left of the driveshaft. How can a shop, in good consciousness, blame a customer for such a disastrous failure? It is also interesting to note they make 2.5-5 million dollars per year in revenue, and are going to fight tooth and nail to blame a broke college student who worked all summer cutting lawns in humid, 100-degree Pennsylvania summer for a failure clearly caused by their poor manufacturing methods. Really pretty frustrated with what I've had to deal with in my experience with Delaware Valley Truck Service.

[poondobber]

The R154 is affordable and can hold more power than a w58 in good condition. This wasn't a w58 problem, it seems like a crappy driveshaft issue. W58's can hold a bit over 400 if it's in good condition with thicker trans fluid and a good clutch.

Get your shaft balanced and have a professional welder overlook the custom driveshaft next time before installing it. If the welds aren't uniform and are suspiciously thicker in one location than the other, it could suggest a weakpoint in the construction of it.

You could balance it at home, but I wouldn't suggest it on a one piece. I would send it out to the DriveShaft shop for high speed balancing and consulting on shaft construction.

Balancing at home is not a good idea. You cannot balance with yokes flopping around. A good shop will balance at high speed on a full assembly. If your shaft is spinning at 3000RPM while cruising you should balance at 3500 or 4000. I would only have a shop with balancing equipment weld a shaft. They will have the most experience and the right equipment. They may even weld on the same machine that balances. Chances are they have already made a shaft for your application as well.

[rice4life]

The R154 is affordable and can hold more power than a w58 in good condition. This wasn't a w58 problem, it seems like a crappy driveshaft issue. W58's can hold a bit over 400 if it's in good condition with thicker trans fluid and a good clutch.

Get your shaft balanced and have a professional welder overlook the custom driveshaft next time before installing it. If the welds aren't uniform and are suspiciously thicker in one location than the other, it could suggest a weakpoint in the construction of it.

You could balance it at home, but I wouldn't suggest it on a one piece. I would send it out to the DriveShaft shop for high speed balancing and consulting on shaft construction.

[DER E30]

If my maths are correct you'd be spinning that shaft in the neighborhood of 4400-4500 rpm at 80.. That's pretty fast and a lot of inertia if you think about it. But I might be thinking about it the wrong way haha motor spin around 35-3600 rpm? lol

I don't think the diff being welded makes any difference to the driveshaft, but I WOULD NOT mention that to the driveshaft people if you haven't already...

[poondobber]

300hp is a different way to break it, there are at least 2 ways to break a shaft. 1 with just straight up twisting it by applying more tq to it than it can handle, and the second is harmonics. The guy above was correct. It literally has nothing to do with how much power your motor makes... Vibration and harmonics are what makes driveshafts fail... I think its usually the U joints themselves that fail but sometimes the long skinny shafts like that are ever so slightly imbalanced or whatever and the tube gets a harmonic vibration so strong that it can't handle it. Hence the explosion while you were cruising probably putting 50 or less hp to the ground to push the car a constant 80mph or whatever. This is the reason that most cars have a two piece shaft, breaking it in half, adding a joint and center bushing more than doubles the speed at which the shaft fails.
Sounds like the shaft wasn't stiff enough to handle the speed at which you spun it... If they used oem tube it might not have been thick enough or big enough to handle it.
http://www.4xshaft.com/vibrations.asp
http://www.expeditionportal.com/foru...p/t-86581.html
also the u joints must be correctly oriented...

What is the rear end ratio and how tall are the tires you have? You are probably spinning it a good bit faster than a big truck does...

All that interesting stuff doesn't help you out any though... sucks.

Right. Its the imbalance that lead to the failure. Having a heavy steel driveshaft makes this worse. The length kills it though. If it was a short stiff shaft with high imbalance it just would have vibrated the hell out of the car, possibly damaged the transmission or axle. That long shaft will bend right in the middle like a wet noodle.

Ujoints are actually the biggest cause of imbalance. If they are not centered they will whip the shaft around. They can take an absurd amount of abuse. I have seen ears torqued off the yokes due to torque and bearings fail due to high angles but imbalance will usually kill something else first.

[kibur]

300hp is a different way to break it, there are at least 2 ways to break a shaft. 1 with just straight up twisting it by applying more tq to it than it can handle, and the second is harmonics. The guy above was correct. It literally has nothing to do with how much power your motor makes... Vibration and harmonics are what makes driveshafts fail... I think its usually the U joints themselves that fail but sometimes the long skinny shafts like that are ever so slightly imbalanced or whatever and the tube gets a harmonic vibration so strong that it can't handle it. Hence the explosion while you were cruising probably putting 50 or less hp to the ground to push the car a constant 80mph or whatever. This is the reason that most cars have a two piece shaft, breaking it in half, adding a joint and center bushing more than doubles the speed at which the shaft fails.
Sounds like the shaft wasn't stiff enough to handle the speed at which you spun it... If they used oem tube it might not have been thick enough or big enough to handle it.
http://www.4xshaft.com/vibrations.asp
http://www.expeditionportal.com/foru...p/t-86581.html
also the u joints must be correctly oriented...

What is the rear end ratio and how tall are the tires you have? You are probably spinning it a good bit faster than a big truck does...

All that interesting stuff doesn't help you out any though... sucks.

the car has a welded 4.10 rear, with stock wheels and tires. 205/60/r15, I believe.

in all honesty, this stuff does help me out because it is more than plenty ammunition to go after this place if they decide to deny this was a product of anything other than their own faulty quality.