Front Diff Disassembly

So for fun I took apart my front diff from my blown center diff assembly.

Here is a video of me taking it apart:

http://youtu.be/r30jkSc_CBA

Here are some photos of it:

To compare the pinion/spider gears I measure the shafts of the front diff vs the center diff. I didn't have any good spider/pinion gears left from my center diff to do a comparison photo of them side by side.

Center diff shafts:


Front diff shafts:

So does the center diff rely on the front diff to maintain its position and fit inside the transfer? In other words can one exist in the transfer without the other?

They are both in the spot where a normal diff in a FWD trans goes. Not in the transfer case. Only the Viscous Coupling, and the transfer gears (ring and pinion) are in the transfer case.

But yes you need both the center and the front together for this unit to work. The Front Diff spins freely inside of the Center Diff housing.

You can see on that machined into the front diff housing is the center diff side gear. Obviously this is the side gear for the front wheels. The other side gear (Not photoed) is for the rear wheels. Also the spline in the middle is for the Viscous Coupling to be hooked up to the front wheel side of the center diff.

Alright thanks. I was curious in respect of welding the center diff for rwd and dumping the front diff to save weight.

CMS-GT4":22hdow5k said:

Alright thanks. I was curious in respect of welding the center diff for rwd and dumping the front diff to save weight.

Click to expand...

You could get away with doing that. You would just weld the rear wheel center diff side gear to the center diff housing. Then you can get rid of the VC and the front diff.

http://youtu.be/UWXdrpdJA6U?t=28s

At the 0:28 point in the video I start to spin the side gear of the center diff that is for the rear wheels. You would just have to weld it to the housing like this.

That is what I was wondering. There had been a few rwd conversion claims, but none explained how they did it with the stock gearbox. I always said, its sort of pointless of converting the awd tranny to rwd due to dragging around all the extra weight. Kind of counter productive to the performance gains. I would Imagine if one could drop some of that transfer weight, and then weld some covers on the axle holes, then one might have a fun little thing to do to an extra gear box as an experiment.