I found a TORSEN series 3 and I was wondering if you gear heads had any pro's or con's about it! It reminds me of the Detroit locker in design!

Just picking at your brains a bit!!

Thanks,
Kevin

 

The Torsen is nothing like the Detroit Locker as far as I know. It is very similar to the Truetrac. As far as I know they are both worm gear limited slip differentials. They work well for road racing and auto cross, as well as street use. The only problem that I know of is that sometimes they will not lock up when doing a burnout. Usually you can hit the brakes and get it to lock up.

 

The TORSEN is similar to a Truetrac in that it is a gear style LSD. However, the TORSEN uses worm gears and spur gears to limit slip whereas the Truetrac uses side gears and pinions to limit slip. Both will work just fine for road racing and street use.

IMO the TORSEN is better than the Truetrac because the axles are linked together by the worm gear & spur gears. I've attached a portion of a paper I wrote about the differences between the TORSEN & Truetrac.

Hope this helps.

 

The LS1 crowd are breaking the torsens with fairly mild combos, but that's drag racing, which is not what torsens were originally designed for. Which is road course use.

 

If you break a Torsen it will lock the one or both of the rear tires and require a tow truck. Sometimes it doesn't lock based on rate of torque application and you will only spin one tire. Auburn (cone style) or Eaton (clutch style) will wear out eventually and stop working.

 

The Eaton might wear out in about 30 or 40 years. There are still many old Camaros and Chevelles running around with the original Eaton in them and they still work fine. Now the Auburn will wear out pretty quick in many cases. They can't be rebuilt. The Eaton can be rebuilt and it can be tuned to fit your needs with different clutch sets and preload spring rates.

 

I can see breaking the torsen with a trans break or manual transmission! The shock to the rear with out the preload on the gears would be bad! I am going to use the Zexel Torsen behind a built 355 and TH400 and line lock!

 

They're putting the TORSEN in the new Audi R8 diesel supercar. You mean to tell me that an engine putting out just over 500hp will break that diff? Come on, that Audi R8 will be putting out almost 700hp and almost twice that in torque.

You'd really have to try to get that TORSEN to break.

 

I bet the R8 won't have a 7.5 inch rear end in it. The size of the rear end has a lot to do with the strength of the differetnial. A small rear end can't have a large differetnial in it, so the parts in the differential will also have to be small. A larger rear end will have larger differential parts in it. A Torsen for a 12 bolt will be stronger than a Torsen for the 7.5. The R8 will probably be all wheel drive, which will take a lot of the load off of the rear.

 

Well,,, I guess I am going to find out!! The car we are building is going to be mainly a bad-*** street car! We will take it to the strip from time to time just for fun! I am eager to see how the Zexel will work for us!
I will let you all know! It sounds like there isn't many of you on this site that have given it much of a try!!

I hear perseptions of the Zexel Torsen on here, so, I will be the test car for it!

I am still wanting to hear more constructive comments on the topic!

Thanks,
Kevin

 

So did you ever install and test the Torsen? I'm looming at either the torsen T2R or an Eaton for my wagon.. Mostly street use, but a few 1320 ft trips planned as well. Have no posi at all at the moment ,and 3.08:1 gears, hoping to swapping to 3.42's or3.73's and the posi unit.

 

So did you ever mount the Torsen and found out. been hearing bad things about the Torsen units, finding lots of metal in the case, not being rebuildable when they shred.

 

The usuall breakage i have seen on 4th gen forums and
other sources is the ring gear side of the carrier breaks
where the bearing presses on,letting the carrier **** in
the housing getting the ring+pinion out of mesh.
Not really sure of the cause,but the steep pitch of the
axle gears will put a lot of outward pressure on the ends
of the carrier under a heavy shock load such as the
clutch being sidestepped at high rpm
I got a torsen carrier from an accident damaged '99 z
axle-i plan to install this posi in my '82 axle using '90
28 spline axles-just havent gotten to doing this yet,
was about to do the swap when a tranny drop and
repair sidetracked me
My engine is fairly mild and i have an auto tranny,
so i don't expect any breakage problems...

 

I have had a torsen in my car for about 4 years have at least 100 passes on it and about 10k street miles I have never had a problem with it. my car has a 350, a super T-10, a 100HP nitrous kit,and drag radials. My best pass with it was 11.99 @ 118. but Im only getting 1.80 sec 60' times though so im not beating it too hard off the line. I like it on the street but I liked driving the car better at the track when i had the old diff with the spider gears welded because the car left straight it seems to pull left a little with the torsen. I recomend it 100% for a street car.