Transmission carnage, broken output shaft.

Left work the other day, approximately 1/2 throttle IF that and when it was was supposed to go into 2nd,  nothing.  Made it to the side of the road but it had no gears at all.  It would roll forward in neutral but not in reverse and it stayed locked up like that even while being winched onto the flat deck.  Talked to the shop today and there is not much salvageable.  They aren't sure if the output shaft broke first and tore up the back half before taking out the front pump which then tore up the front of the transmission or vice versa.  Their rebuild guy says he has only seen a broken output shaft like this once before in 40 years, but a quick Google search shows it is quite common in the higher horsepower cars and trucks but not much mentioned in stock applications.  So far I'm looking @ around a $3500 repair bill.  I'll post some pics of the broken bits once I can get some.  I'm just  right now. 

Well that sucks, I have heard of them breaking also.

I've broken one on my rebuilt but original transmission.  Mine didn't cause as much carnage as yours.  Pump wasn't damaged, but case was cracked, one of the planetary gearsets was trashed, and a few other parts had to be replaced but I'm running most of the parts out of that transmission now - probably over 50K miles on those parts in another case.

Crisp, tire-chirping shifts, whether caused by power levels or by programming and/or shift kit parts installed, put a lot of stress on the output shaft.  I've softened up my shifts via computer tune, installed an aftermarket beefed-up output shaft, and doubled power, without further problems.

Well I heard from the shop today and they finally got the trans done.  They had to pull it out again as one of the shifts was making noise and was not really shifting correctly.  I also had them check the rear diff as it was just completely rebuilt this spring, and when I got the new tires and rims 2 weeks ago, everything was so much quieter that I could hear a whine from the rear diff.  I talked to them about an hour ago and they were tearing the rear diff apart to try and find the source of the whine.  They said it was none of the normal things that causes a whine like backlash out of adjustment etc.  Who knows, maybe I got another faulty Detroit Truetrac. 

Man, my rear diff has been whining almost since I bought it with 109,000 miles on it. I've asked if about it multiple times at different shops and nobody seems to really care about it.  Over 40,000 miles later it's still whining.  Oh, guess I just keep driving it until it grenades.  I figure It's inevitable.