by Trail X » Thu Apr 12, 2012 2:19 pm
Being in park is the key to why it failed I think. Essentially you had a locked front prop shaft. So when you were hit something had to absorb the impact energy that slid you a foot. You were probably on fairly solid ground, so maybe the front tires didn't skid easily. It's a similar sort of impact to spinning up a tire really fast, and then gaining traction suddenly (like if you have a front tire off the ground, and the truck tipped forward) (you see this a lot on open diff'd vehicles)... but instead of the inertia of a rotating tire to absorb, you had the inertia of an entire vehicle to absorb.
I'd still like to see the pictures you promised us. Very strange the piece of the puzzle that actually got tweaked.