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Interesting you guys had axle problems. My family has overloaded stuff for a long time, I'm not aware of anyone having axle issues. Bearing failures, yes, like my dad's tandem axle trailer that was home build (no suspension) had the front wheel bearing fail and the whole wheel came off the trailer, hub and all while loaded at the scrap yard.
I drove an astro van to college for a short time, only paid $100 for it, was only going to scrap it. It was rusted out, only 2 doors worked on it, and the rear end had a major grumble (ring & pinion gears worn out). I did a few burn outs with it but never hauled anything with it. Wasn't half bad, too bad the last owner was a slob and the van stunk and food was pressed in the carpet and such. After fixing some problems it had, no one would give me $400 for a running/driving vehicle, so I scrapped it and got something like $600 out of it.
I sort of had an axle failure on a yard truck, first 4x4 toyota I got and the guy said the wheel bearing was bad. Thought nothing of it and hauled it hom on a car dolly. The second or 3rd time driving it around my yard out back, a log caught the tire just right and the axle slid out something like 2ft. The axle bearing was GONE, the only thing that was keeping the axle in was the bearing races till I hit that log just right to pop it out. Cut brake line and 4 bolts and I swapped another one in and used it till the frame broke. The frame was completely trashed when I got it, it had atleast 50 chainsaw bars welded to it by the last owner.
My dad did break a heavy 3/4 ton front axle before, but that was in a wreck with a large pine tree, it also broke the frame behind the axle.
For fun I've been watching videos about the 7.3L power stroke, and it sounds like it's quite an engine. There's a 5 second truck on the drag strip, and the guy listed off a ton of stuff that's stock on the engine, stock block, heads, crank are the ones I remembered. Even the 2JZ Supra engine isn't *that* strong, the block is good to about 1000hp, stock internals are good to about 600hp, atleast based on people that talk about their built machines. Of course that's not really the focus of this site (max power), but a lot of tactics used can sometimes be applied for better mpg. They used NOS instead of propane, basically the same effect though for a diesel.
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