Drive shaft broke, should I buy a new car?

jimjames

sheslookinhot said:

Ibrahim5 said:

I can replace driveshafts in a few minutes. What's all these hundreds of pounds labour charges all about?

You can’t really replace a drive shaft in few minutes, stop exaggerating.

You can in your head as this poster seems to do on many occasions. Fantasy car repairs and fantasy cars.

Goudy

kimwp said:

paul_c123 said:

Yep, from that MoT history alone I'd not have thought the car was approaching the end of its life. But the driveshaft does look very corroded. Normally an MoT tester will advise of underbody corrosion, what's the rest of it like? This is an old Honda right?

2012 honda. Funnily enough I was under it at the garage about a month before while they were showing me what was causing the rattling I could hear (heat shield corroded at the bolt). I commented on how rusty it all seemed and asked if I needed to be worried about it. (The answer was no)

Modern car bodies are actually pretty well painted and protected from rust these days.
Trouble is, all the parts that are bolted to the body, particularly underneath aren't.

Cars are built in chunks. The body and other large chunks are built separately, then bolted together on an assembly line.
So the engine, gearbox, steering and front suspension is built in one chunk on a subframe, then that subframe is bolted to the body that has been painted after that was assembled.

These parts like the subframe and suspension don't go through the normal car body paint process, so tend to start to rust much sooner.
"Seaside" cars tend to suffer a lot more from this due to the salty air, but most cars of a certain age suffer from lots of rusty components underneath.

This particular generation of Jazz is pretty prone to this. In fact the under body panels in the body shell weren't that well treated at the factory, so the bodies tend to rot and rust underneath as well.

To me, that drive shaft has failed due to rust.
The metal has weakened and the torque being put through it has caused it to snap.
I've seen it before. Manufacturers try to make these components lighter due to emissions so they aren't as robust as they used to be and the poor paint protection leaves them exposed.

In your picture, I can see a few other corroded parts, so it's safe to say your car is now suffering what I described above.
There's a good chance other components will need replacement or fail as time goes on, but it's hard to say what and when without inspecting it myself.