“My Daf Propshaft keeps falling off. WHY ??!!)
We seem to hear this every week now.
I don’t think it is a manufacturing fault as most of the vehicles have done over 500,000 Km which is pretty good for a propshaft. Remember a propshaft contains bearings so it does have a life span, it won’t last forever.
It tends to happen on the DAF 65 and upwards where there are 2 or more propshafts in the driveline.
The centre bearing casing cracks and the whole driveline drops in the middle.
Most people just replace the bearing and fasten it all back up and then carry on. The problem with this is a steel case doesn’t break for no good reason so replacing it is just a temporary measure until it happens again (it will happen again).
The cause is down to the wear in the male and female splines that are underneath the centre bearing. This is what we call a Mid Assembly. It is made up of a Mid Stub (Male spline), Centre Bearing and Companion Flange (Female spline). This Assembly of parts takes around 8 ton of pressure to press together.
If you can take the companion flange off the mid stub by hand or by tapping it with a copper hammer (not the right way to do it) then this means that the splines are worn. 8 ton to put together then at least 8 ton to take apart
A quick video to show you what I mean.
click to see a video of what i mean
The problem is you can only find this out when it is too late. Sadly if we knew when it was going to fail we could save people hundreds of pounds in towing fees and downtime but sadly we can’t and no one should be to blame (it’s a moving part, at some point in its life it will fail).
What we can do is let people know about this problem so they can make a decision on whether to do a quick fix (new bearing) or a complete fix (mid assy). As I mentioned the quick fix is what it says on the tin and will fail pretty quick but the complete fix should be good for a long time.
Just give your local propshaft specialist a call or ring us on 01257 791681 if you would like any more information or prices