[ODE] Inertia & tumbling objects

[Marco Grubert]

Hello,

maybe someone can explain why the following thing happens:
I create a body which is slightly rotated (1 degree around yaw/z axis) and
set it's inertia tensor: dm.setBox( fMass/(x*y*z), x, y,z ); then apply a
constant torque of 5000 units around the x-axis. after a few seconds of
simulated time the box starts flipping around and a few more seconds later
it comes to a complete stop. This happens when x,y,z are set to 40,20,10 (or
similar). If I make the cube's edges equal, or set the initial orientation
to 0 degrees the cube keeps on spinning indefinitely.
So my questions are: why does the rotation suddenly stop? shouldn't this
rotation lead to a rotation about a stable axis?

Regards,
  Marco Grubert