During my recent trip away I encounted the dreaded air diff slip problem that the early GV's have. I have heard this happen before but always thought it was old cvs when turning full lock while in 4wd.
I have all the parts to swap a vitara center with 26 spline gears in to the front but I may have to grind the drivers side gear out to shorten the CV spline engagement like this thread
http://www.auszookers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=46464&p=824903
I have tried swapping the gears out of an air engaging GV center but they don't work. The splined gears are too thin and don't mesh on the spider/pin gears properly.
But back to the air operated diff, here are some photos of its private parts.
The air actuator in the open diff position
blow some compressed air into it and it looks like this
which pushes on the blue steel ring
which directly pushes on the crenelated ring you can see inside the center and engages into the spider/pin gear carrier.
This center I have is in great looking condition. It does not look like the teeth have ever skipped. I don't know the age of the diff but it may be from a later model where Suzuki addressed this issue.
What happens when it starts slipping is that the air pressure on the actuator is not enough to hold it engaged, it pops out and with each pop the teeth start rounding over. Its frucked by this stage. As soon as the teeth are beveled or rounded there is no reason for it to stay locked in when under a lot of differential load.
Since I have free wheeling hubs and was planning on using a standard Vit center I have an idea to weld the side teeth ring in the engaged position so that it can never pop out far enough to slip. I can also turf the actuator. There would be 4 lines of welds in each cut out where the ring slides through the center housing
So after that long winded intro, my question:
Would this be a good solution so I can use this center rather that modifying side gear of the Vit one? Would it be any more reliable?
. No going back now.
