I think my truck is trying to tell me something

[Yukon Jack]

So I was driving home from work two Thursdays ago in my 69 K20, going about 50 mph when all of a sudden there was an incredibly loud bang, followed by my truck diving to the right into another lane of traffic, narrowly missing striking a 1 ton Dodge crew cab followed by the front end shaking horribly. I thought for sure I'd struck that Dodge. I get pulled over expecting to find damage and a mad Dodge truck driver, but surprisingly we did not hit, he must have heard the noise and moved just enough to avoid collision. I did a quick inspection and couldn't find anything wrong which just didn't make any sense. Was able to pull onto a side road and then was able to get on empty dirt roads for the rest of the trip home, driving at about 15 mph. Wife and kids were also on their way home and when I reached home they were able to watch the truck and said the front passenger tire was wobbling. Turns out the outer housing of the hub broke completely around - I'll have to take a picture as I can't really describe the location of the break. Needless to say, the diameter of the hub on the closed knuckle axle is probably 4" and completely broke.

Just so happens that about two years ago I bought a 1984 1 ton crew cab for it's front axle and about three weeks ago I finally got it's dually hubs swapped with a friends Dana 60 SRW hubs (we both needed what the other had, except for gear ratio). So while I'd rather not have the break of my axle force me to do the install, it was going to happen in the next few weeks anyway.

Here's the donor beauty before loosing it's transfer case that ended up getting installed in my 69 K20 last winter when my Rockwell T221 gernaded, and before a buddy bought the rear axle for his gernaded Dana 60. Hmmm, lots of gernading going After selling the rear axle, this beauty cost me a whooping $600 - can't beat that for the front axle, NP205 and a spare SM465!



I've got the old axle out of the way and will be installing the Dana 60 soon. I bought the Superlift Dana 60 U-bolt kit for a pretty good price of $41 and I find it comes with studs rather than bolts. Hope to pick up a new gasket and rubber brake lines today and start installing the axle soon.