A buddy of mine has a 2007 I5 H3 and his axle snapped on his way to work! Straight up snapped, never heard of an axle snapping under normal driving conditions until now. To top it off, finding a shop in Germany to fix it is almost impossible, but thats a whole other beast! Any Ideas as to what happened?

 

We would need a whole bunch more info on exactly what happened to the half shaft to guess what happened.

How bout some pics?

 

Axle is a relative term. Half-shaft? Intermediate Shaft? Ring or pinion?

 

I'll have to ask him, but on a brighter note he did find a mechanic here in Germany that was willing to take a look at it. Give me a few days and I will get back with you!

 

With almost nothing to go on my first thought is it was either damaged previously and finally let go, or a manufacturing defect. Pretty unusual to snap an "axle" just driving along normally.. Unless there is more to the story.