Outer Limits 4x4 Board

hey everyone, i read everything i could find on lockers in the bible but coulnt find out this specific thing:

1. With a detroit EZ locker in the back, what happens when your driving on dry bitumen, when you go around courners, do axles just snap or one wheel spins or what?

or do they have a little bit of give for on road cornering, or are they just fully locked up, like a welded diff? If they are fully locked, wouldnt your tyres get worn rediculously quickly driving on road? Or parts would just break?

thanks guys

On road if they work correctly they should unlock going round corners , but if you go round corners with hard acceleration they won't. Driving in a straight line , your tyre pressure must be perfect or they will favour one side. They will make your car lean going arround corners and also during tight cornering the inner back wheel will drag and yes wear tyre's quicker. It is preferable to use with auto's as manual's have backlash in tail shaft where the auto is alway's loaded , in smaller 4wd's they also suffer from bump steer while driving at speed , if I had the dollars I would go air locker anyday , Cheers Paul.

In a light vehicle such as a zook they arent really a problem onroad. The offroad benefit of a locker greatly outweighs the minute negative effects they have onroad.

Not being a sh!t, but this is also true of a welded diff PJ.

There are some variations in how they can be set up, but personally, I do think they have some "unusual" handling traits on road. It;s not that they do anything wrong per se, but on long conrners they can lead to some sawing at the wheel as small corrections in line will tend to make the locker unlock and lonk a few times though the corner, each time requiring a counter correction.

It's not that this is unique to an auto locker, but the effect of the corrections and the attitude of the car is amplified be the locker.

"Ratchet" style lockers such as this will allow a wheel to overspeed the crownwheel, but not turn slower. On a constant radius corner under coasting throttle, the unlocked wheel will simply freewheel, only the inside wheel staying "driven." as soon as power is applied, a small amount of wheel slip will occur and the diff will lock.

On a straight road, it will stay locked.

The differences in setup will effect how smoothly and freely the diff will unlock and reengage. I understand they can be set up tight enough they almost never unlock.

Personally, for the rear, I vote spool/welded or Airlocker.

for the front, airlocker is the only way to fly, but a well set up autolocker will be acceptable.

You are kind of correct though Itsuki, they do load up the axles a but more than other lockers as they do induce some shock loading, byt htis is a bigger problem in the front.


Just my 2C.

Steve.

when I had one in the rear set up by someone with alot of experiance and running larger rubber (33 swampers) I found it to be fairly transparent, you could hear it ratcheting but not feel it..

Then when I went back to 31's if found it to be a bit of a handful (when I rmoved the ex locker to weld the rear I found that it had a broken pin.. and that the diff housing was not perfectally strait any longer .. both things auto locking diffs hate)