Coming out of Southland after a movie on Wednesday night, I accelerated normally until the car got jolted, sort of as if I ran something over. I thought the jolt was a bit strange and there was nothing in the rear view mirror. I didn't get to ponder this for long because the car starting heaving and making awful clunking sounds. Oh oh, put in neutral, pull into service lane (this was on Nepean highway so having a service lane entrance right there was quite lucky).

I got out and saw a huge trail of liquid behind the car. Saw that it was coming from the transmission area and was reddish. AT fluid. Crack. Damn.
Two nights later I towed the car home with me doing the braking in my car and my girlfriend doing the acceleration. UHF CB radios were a great thing to have for the towing.

So today I jacked the car up to have a look.
Oh well, what can I say. At least it died in an exciting fashion.

http://www.aussiemagna.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=11892

The only thing holding the bottom third of the differential portion of the transaxle case it the crossmember running under it. The differential must be seriously busted because it did enormous damage to the transaxle case (cracks on the top side as well) and I found one of the washers that sits on the pinions in the diff.
What the hell do I do now, that doesn't involve calling a mechanic and saying "My car is busted. Please fix."?

WTF i really wanna know how that happend..... :shock:

Yeh look how thick that sh!t is...How the hell does that happen?

I don't know. This car was apparently sometimes driven on a farm and had the odometer wound back before my family bought it. It now shows about 208,000 km, so maybe it has 240,000 km or so for real. It has led a strenous yet enjoyable life in my hands (and feet). I have done burnouts in it, driven on twisty roads many times and once even on a racetrack.
However, I am always gentle when the car is cold. And the car was cold, so I was accelerating at a moderate pace when this happened. I am puzzled why it chose that moment.

After looking at that washer and the AT manual, I have decided that doing 3rd gear burnouts (wet road + bald tyres = aquaplaning at one wheel = effortless burnout even in redlined 3rd gear) with the speedo indicating over 150 km/h (may have been 180) when actual speed is below 70, may not be a good idea. In cases such as this, there is a huge speed difference between the left and right wheels. This means the pinions in the diff turn like mad. And they have no bearings! :nuts: The radial loads sit on a shaft and the thrust loads go against curved washers. This has surprised me, although you can see the logic behind it. The logic is: diffs are there to allow your wheels to turn at slightly different speeds while cornering. The speeds differences are low and the total distance difference over the lifetime of the car would be not very big. So why introduce the extra complexity of proper bearings? Well, loss of traction is one reason why. But screw those people, Mitsubishi's target audience are normal people getting from A to B.
The washer I found has scoring on it and has bluish colour. I hope this bluish colour is from heat treatment and not heating during driving. :redface: Actually, my AT fluid would probably catch fire if the washer was getting that hot (vague memory says 700 deg C sounds right for bluing steel).
I'm not sure whether this is the cause of the eventual failure, but it seems the most likely at the moment.


As for why the case split apart, I'll bet that something in the diff came apart and got jammed between the casing and the diff.

OUCH! But yup, that'll do it :P.

What the hell do I do now, that doesn't involve calling a mechanic and saying "My car is busted. Please fix."? well... looks like you need another trans... and put that one somewhere in the shed and be proud of that effort...

so you can start by taking things apart (ie get driveshafts off the car, etc) and getting that old trans outta there... unless you want a mechanic to do it...