Broke CV joint at the track, but recovered thanks to the power of FRIENDSHIP!
 

Sunday morning I was at New Hampshire Motor Speedway (South Oval config) for practice and then time trials with COMSCC. 1st session was going GREAT, I was having a fantastic time running with cars doing similar lap times :) Then about 6 laps in the car lost all drive after the transition from banked oval to infield section in Turn 10. Thought I'd lost 3rd gear, but no drive in any gears, hrm... Coasted around and down pit lane and got a tow back to the garage.

1st thought was to secure a ride for the time trial as it was our last event and my class championship was on the line. I thought maybe the clutch just 100% let go. Turned out to be driver-side inner CV joint.

@TunaNoCrust offered up his TRD86 cuz he's fricking awesome :cheers:
Then @gcranston told me he had a spare halfshaft! More awesomeness :clap:

We put my 235/45-17 Yoko A052s on TunaNoCrust's car with plan for both of us to run the time trial in his car, I figured it'd be late-afternoon/evening before I got the halfshaft installed. But a couple of club regulars who have helped me out massively before showed up and with guidance from gcranston we had the bad halfshaft replaced within maybe an hour to 90 minutes, so I was able to make 2nd practice and then run the TT in my car!

Won the time trial, set COMSCC T50 lap record, won T50 championship for the year. :burnrubber:

Big thanks to @gcranston, @TunaNoCrust, and S2000 guyz Roe and Andrew :cheers:

So it was the same as 99% of all other axle failures? Inboard driver side.

Weird.. I wonder what causes that. /s

Congrats on getting it back together, I love stories like this because stuff like this is a big part of why being at the racetrack is awesome.

I should point out that he beat me with my own parts! How rude...

Helluva season, Dan. Congrats on the win.

It felt like a really fast one too, THANKS :D

It sure has been, here's to next year!

Yes the halfshafts tend to fail. There is a thicker version from STi and other vendors. GRMN had the best one which was thicker and lighter using a hollow structure, but I don't think it is available anymore.

By any chance could it be the fact that the exhaust is closer to this side?
It could be the reason why Cusco makes a heatshield for it and I think I remember that someone made their own from here as well.

It's great seeing people come together to help out at the track. If your car is going to break down that's one of the best places for it to happen given the people you're around.

That was the purpose of the “/s” sarcasm tag. It was a joke because everyone at this point pretty much knows which cv fails and why and what to do about it.

Was the boot still intact and holding the grease in? I have had a couple boot failures, but noticed before the axle failed.

Yeah, boot was intact. In my usage, the left rear halfshaft gets pretty hammered due to a couple of turns at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, T3 and T10, where you are cornering hard right and on the gas right over big transitions, BAM. I would guess that heat at that CV joint => thinner and more degraded grease which probably doesn't help... I did get 40 track days (maybe 10 of them at NHMS) and 59k miles out of it before it busted...

Well that is pretty good service life from a stock part used that hard. Used ones are fairly cheap on ebay. I think I will start carrying a spare to the track.

I carry two. You never know if someone else will also need one. Enough twins are typically at the track.

I should note that there might have been a *tiny* warrning before failure. Sometimes going through the transition at T10 (right-hander, on the gas, fully loaded left-side suspension) I would hear a kind of metallic thunk sound, as if a swaybar bushing was going bad. But suspension felt tight everywhere. Other than that, the car behaved 100% normally on track until the CV joint failed *at* the transition in the middle of T10. Nothing else going on at all, fully loaded cornering hard right, on the gas.

Anh idea how often should you be doing this maintenance?