Follow up post 5/9/10: when I jack just one front corner of my car up, I can freely spin the wheel with almost no resistance. Is this true for everyone else? How can this be limited slip??

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Has anyone installed a front LSD yet? Curious to see if you've noticed much difference. There's a Carbonetic 1.5 Way available for the car I think, but it seems that people (like AMS) are replacing the rear diff and leaving this stock. Opinions on doing this if I'm doing a trans rebuild anyway?

Thanks.

 

Whats wrong with the mechanical limited dif thats in there now?

 

I guess that's what I'm asking. I noticed autocrossing that it seemed to spin the inside front tire, but maybe it was actually spinning both front tires. Then I saw this aftermarket one and wondered if it really made a difference.

 

Well to be honest, unless you a trained autocross driver I wouldn't think you would notice a difference if you swapped the front diff with an aftermarket one. Unless that aftermarket one had torque biasing like the stock rear diff, but I doubt one is available.
Just my opinion.

 

It's waste of money to upgrade the front diff for just autoX.

Save your money and get a quality of set of coilovers, sway-bars, and strut bars. It will help much more than a diff.

 

Double Post

 

Thanks for the advice!

 

Followup up post: when I jack just one front corner of my car up, I can freely spin the wheel with almost no resistance. Is this true for everyone else? How can this be limited slip??

 

It's normal that you should be able to spin the one wheel freely when it's off the ground. Torque sensing LSD's are 1 way, they can only distribute torque from one axle to the other when power is being pushed through it. Also, a torsen LSD is useless if you begin to lift a tire off the ground while driving (i.e. a tight auto-x course). Torsen's LSD's operate with a torque bias ratio, not sure what the evo's is, most are 4:1. Basically the diff can supply 4 times the torque that the wheel that is losing traction has, to the wheel that has traction (confusing). So there has to be some traction available to both tires for it to work correctly. If you lift a tire off the ground then there is no traction and no torque requirements for that tire, so the diff can't transfer an torque to the tire with traction. Anywho... the diff on your car is fine. I really wouldn't consider replacing it with aftermarket because frankly I don't see a reason to. They are basically maintenance free, they work on normal gear oil, there are no adjmustments, they don't wear out. Plus it's a great diff for the front because you rarely ever lift a front tire off the ground and since it's a 1 way you don't need to worry about understeer when road conditions are less than ideal (like gravel, snow or rain).

 

cool, thanks for the detailed post!