The other day after driving for most of the day, just as I rounded the turn onto my street the back wheels locked up. Luckily I was only going like 15 so it wasn't a disaster. The driveshaft had been making an intermittent noise leading up to this, so I assumed it had broken. Looked under the car and saw nothing out of the ordinary. I then backed the car out of the road, and pulled onto the shoulder.

I had the car towed home the next morning and the driver said it rolled onto the rollback and rolled back off with no problems. I have since moved it around my property a little, and have had no wheel lockup or other signs of trouble.

Anyone have any ideas? I got under the car to visually inspect and there is nothing out of order.

 

Probably your diff but, you’ll need to get it on jack stands to further investigate the matter. Put the trans in neutral and see if you have any binding, excessive slop or noises at the pinion first.

 

Maybe a rear wheel bearing overheated and bound up in the heat and now its cooled off will turn? Get the wheels up in the air and start checking things out.

 

If it's one wheel, and it made a squealing noise leading up to it, it's likely a bearing somewhere between the diff and the wheel (e.g. wheel bearing). If both wheels locked up it might be the diff, drivetrain, gearbox...

Hard to fully diagnose over the internet, but your problem is definitely that at least one spinny thing decided to stop being a spinny thing

 

👍🏻

 

I wish I could tell you if both wheels locked up, but I didn’t see any skid marks at all when I drove by there the next day. Thank you for the info.

 

Folks (even techs) forget that there are zerk fittings on both output shafts; these need grease . . .

 

I had a universal joint freeze on the right side axel shaft on one of my cars. At that point it started bucking and making terrible noises. Relatively easy fix though and was fine after they were replaced.