First I like to thank Tristan and Bearman for their phone support today. Being in a state of devastation this arvo it was very good to get a bit of there-there and good advise of course.
I have an RFSV that I've owned for just a matter of months and have been working through a few larger service items and on the list of things to do was loctiting the centre diff bolts. Too late though as I suspect they let go today. It started with a strange little squealing sound under load but before I could get my head around what it might be and where it was coming from (30 seconds later say) the sound became a lot more alarming and in went the clutch and I pulled over. Luckily (there's the eternal optimist speaking) I wasn't that far from home and 90 bucks later I was laying underneath it in comfort of my own driveway. So straight up I noticed a hair line crack in the output housing and a fair amount of play in the centre diff. when i got it of the tilt tray I gently drove it back and forth to determine what was happening. The squealing sound was accompanied by a rattle like a bag of nuts and bolts. All gears are easily selected with no notchieness so I'm praying the gearbox itself ok. Please don't tell me I'm dreaming!
While at this stage, before I pull it down, I am only assuming that was the cause of the problem. However it would probably be safe to suggest to anyone who has this job of loctiting the centre diff bolts on their to-do list, maybe put it at the top, in highlighter. I know I'm not the first to have this problem and this has been documented previously in this forum but for something that causes such a catastrophic failure yet is such a simple mitigation process I think it warrants repeating.
This truck is my daily driver and work truck. I absolutely love driving it. Every time I hop in it puts a smile on my face. Unfortunately I lost the smile today. It'll be back though, I know it!
I'll pull it down and take a few shots to include in a full report. Till then.....