i'm thinking about having a friedn weld my spider gears together in the rear end so i spin posi all the time.........my car doesn't have posi....its just a stock 305 5sp. do you think it will hold or tear **** up if it is done right?

 

it's not the best thing to be doing and you'll break more than you fix with it. why not buy a posi carrier and do it right?

 

I had a buddy do this. Its a tad dangerous... without differential action the car will not want to turn very well. You'll wear out tires faster and put lots of stress on axles. I'd consider this a kind of low buck drag race only thing. There is a reason spools are not used on the street.

 

do it youll be sorry after buts its gonna be fun breaking lose at every corner

 

Read somewhere about a real nasty wreck that was caused by a malfunction with welded spider gears. They guy let his g/f drive the car and the rear end froze on her. If I recall right the car flipped several times.

I might have read this on thirdgen.org or it might have been fiero.nl. Do a search on both of the boards and you should come up with it.

Found a reference to the story so it was on thirdgen...

https://www.thirdgen.org/techbb2/sho...t=welded+gears

I don't have time to find the actual story, but short answer; I wouldn't do it.

 

if it's done correctly it will hold up fine. I would definitely use aftermarket axles with any type of locked rear. Break an axle under power with a regular posi or open diff and you'll loose power to both wheels. Break an axle with a detroit locker, air locker, spool or welded diff and you do a real hard and sudden turn because the wheel on the good axle keeps pushing. That's the real danger. Welded diffs picked up a bad reputation since anyone who welds a diff usually doesn't have money for aftermarket axles,

 

We ran a welded diff for a while, it was in a '62 Impala. The thing had trouble taking curves on the highway at 60 mph. I personally wouldn't recommend it unless your car is a strip only vehicle.

 

for a street driven car, welded spider gears are a very bad idea!! I assume you will have to turn the car, that is the problem. the car cannot turn without BOTH rear wheels slipping. that may be great fun going around corners on a sunny afternoon but it's potentially deadly on the highway and i would say inevitably deadly in any kind of moisture like morning dew or rain. If you drive the car on and off a trailer at the drag strip its not a bad idea but at best its just a low buck fix. Another thing to consider is that the added stress on the axels will eventually cause one to break. if that happens at speed you risk the wheel comming off if you have drum brakes. With disks the car can becom very hard to control but the wheel probably wont come off.

just my 2 cents, i would get a used one from a junkyard for 200 bucks instead.

 

Put me down for another "bad idea"

 

We always called this one a Lincoln Locker named after Lincoln welding eqiupment. It can be very dangerous on the street, do it right buy a real locker. It's also kind of red if you know what I mean.

 

Lets see. We have a weak 10 bolt with crappy components that tend to break under mild loads. Hey lets make it weaker and unsafe by welding the spiders togather, might win a nobel prize for that idea. Seriously Its not a good idea, Ive seen to many axles shear off on systems that have 1/4 of the load you would create by welding the spiders or installing a spool basicly the same thing. If you want a real posi (locker) get a power trax, I'm happy with mine and it's the closest thing you can get to a spool system safely.

 

wouldnt the best idea to lock both axels be a mini spool? it essentially does the same thing, and its about 40-60 bucks for a mini spool.....on the other hand you could get a zexel torsen from slp for 99 bucks.....

you WILL loose corning ability locking both axels but......it would be fun barking the tires any time you wanted to in a turn........until it rains lol

doh...i always fail to read ALL the posts and someone beats me to the punch right after i hit submit reply.....DAMNED YOU'S!!!!

 

If you want to hear more about driving with a spooled (or just plain welded) axle, check some of the off-road web boards. They have more experience with the matter.

My brother goes four-wheeling, and his take on a spool is that it's great in the dirt, but try a few tight turns into parking spots... squueek! Chirp! Skid! gets old fast on the street. Given that half the fun of third-gens is taking curves, think long and hard about that one wheel that will always be losing traction whenever you're turning... It's just not worth it.