I was cruising at 60 mph in my M151a2 when suddenly everything started to shake and the transmission jumped out of gear. I pulled over, uncertain what had happened. Everything seemed OK, so I took off slowly and headed to the shop, which fortunately was only about 4 miles away.
Once in the shop, I started to look for what happened, thinking it was in the transmission. That was when I noticed that the flywheel would kind of flop around in the bellhousing. I dropped the pan to find that the crankshaft had broken just after the #4 cylinder, but had broken in such a way that the front part of the crank was still pushing the back half of the crank. With only one bearing supporting the back half, it was a little rough though.
M151 engines came out quickly....I spent the next 45 minutes pulling the pack, caught a ride home from one of the guys, and returned with another engine (I had plenty, I bought 30 of the mutts for salvage), and had it out of the shop by lunch.
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