Mystery of the popping driveshafts: Explained!

For the life of me, I swear, holding the breshly-built Mad Jedi in my hands before it ever even tasted a drop of fuel, I could not figure out how the center driveshafts could come out. The dogbone ends are buried deep into the drive cups and even with a lot of twisting & turning of the axle tubes, they would not come out. Dozens of people had them pop out regularly, though, so there was obviously something I was missing. When I finally took the truck out for a drive and had the shafts pop out time after time, I figured it out. Twisting the axle tubes as happens during articulation doesn't put much strain on the center shafts. However, there's this motion to consider:

The green line represents the suspension links, and the yellow circle is obviously the wheel & tire. When the links bow in under stress as shown, the distance between the output and input cups that hold the center dogbone decreases. Add a little twisting motion, and you have a very strong strain on the shaft. As the stiff dogbone bends, it quickly loads up with a great deal of potential energy, and with that energy, it can spring out like a thin chicken bone squeezed end to end between your fingers.

The much-praised "turnbuckle trick" (seen on the Tips & Tricks page) prevents the bowing of the suspension links, and thus saves your dogbones from popping out.

The Mad Jedi will never drive again without some sort of reinforcement of the links!