I am out wheeling near Anza Borrego state park this weekend. I got back out on the rows and felt bad vibration. Found my rotoflex to be shredded and Mis aligned. I’m out in the middle of nowhere with a buddy and his truck. Is it ok to drive like this? Any quick fix I can do to drive 3 hours home on the highway?

 

Do you have CDL? You can remove the rear shaft and drive home with the CDL locked.

 

I do have the CDL. In the process of removing the shaft now. Thank you!

 

A temp solution = line up all 3 slots on the diff side & drive shaft side and secure with 3 bolts. This is NOT a permanent fix! This is a roadside/trail fix to get you carefully home or off the trail.

 

thanks Best. We went with the shaft removal and made it home safe. New rotoflex joint is on the way.

 

Glad to hear you got home. You can delete the rotoflex ad well with a new driveshaft. If you are keeping it, best to keep a spare on hand if you are going someplace remote.

 

@Disco Aaron the URO model are not considered a good choice long term, but they make a good trail spare.

 

I just went for the rubber option to keep it cheap for now. Is the rotoflex joint prone to failure pretty quickly when under a good amount of load/flex? I know they are known to be bad in the long run. It seems like mine went pretty quickly and we didn’t do any super gnarly trails. No obvious signs of it going yesterday although I didn’t look at it. As soon as I got on the road today the vibration was very noticeable.

 

I'm fond of keeping the rotoflex vs removing it...in theory it helps limit shock loading and given the rovers small axles/weak diffs I'll take whatever help I can limiting the potential shock loading...I haven't worn through one yet in over 30k brutal miles (I drive my white one hard and put it away wet...almost half of those miles are off pavement and not just easy forest roads..)

 

My rotoflex was still good and I had no vibration, only tiny cracks when bending. I replaced it as preventive maintenance at 110kmiles. Brand GKN, was $76 then.