[LOL] Yeah, I've wheeled for Hundreds of Miles in our Desert and Mountainous areas. There were only a few times where I may have stressed the Diff, but I always crawl using the locker instead of hammering through it.

I would not have known I had an issue until I got the Shrock cover and then had the leak I needed to fix. The Dealer told me that the took it for a test drive when I dropped it off and it went out completely on them. [Just in time!]

It really looks to me (and I tried my best to capture it in the pictures) like the heat treating did not go completely through the gear and the Tooth was pushed off of the gear through shear force. Maybe a solution would be to remove the Spider gears and re-heat-treat them, but I'm not a metalurgist and don't know if that would do more harm than good.

I'm hoping I can get on the X-Ray and find some more evidence to put forth, but I don't expect much from it.

I do feel for you man, but I'd have to say that you and maybe a couple others [that I haven't found] are the only ones that couldn't get it covered under warranty and until there are more of you with 'out of pocket' expenses you'll have a hard time pressing Nissan into a solution.

I hope the Best for you and understand anyones distrust and heartbreak over this, but on the whole my X has been good to me. However it doesn't appear like I'll have it for Hundreds of Thousands of miles like I had hoped. It will get very expensive unless I swap everything out for Bullet proof and then find the next weak link.

Adam