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Project E36 M3 - Guibos and Driveshaft Bearings October 29 2013
I remember watching a show called the Forza Motorsport Challenge, where several competitors raced in a series of challenges and winners got credits for mods to be used in subsequent challenges. It was a pretty cool concept of bringing the Forza Motorsport video game into reality. I remember watching the final race. The battle was heated, and everyone was in contention for the top step of the podium. One of the muscle cars was powering down the straight when the sound of a thousand Riverdancers on bath salts erupted and instantly the inside of the car was filled with a violent swirl of debris. I was sure the engine had exploded. When the car finally came to a rest on the side of the track and the cloud of debris subsided, it was revealed that the drive shaft had snapped. In the process it had thrashed around so violently that it ripped out a huge portion of the floor pan. The car was done for the day.
That's what I think of when I think of drive shaft failures, so when I saw a small crack in the drive shaft coupling (aka guibo) of our E36 M3, I didn't waste much time attending to it. The job took several hours performing it solo and documenting every step, but there wasn't anything too difficult.