sorry dodgeman, its a welded diff, i just couldnt find the appropriate words to sound the tyres, to me it does sound like a click click click, close enough anyway, and to everyone else, youve just got to treat the locker right. also turning into parks and servos aint no biggy, its not like a 1200 is the biggest car on earth anyway, pretty nimble even with a lock diff, you should see my mates van ford econovan with a locker, it swings serious o's. theyre all good, just dont come round a corner in the wet, with a car on the other side of the road, turn, rev and clutch it, if you do , pack another set of undies in the boot.

like selfwedge said parking etc isnt a problem, maybe you take too much care of locked diffs? but you can just park them etc like you would with a normal diff. like was said before about detroit lockers, the "click" sound may turn you off at first but you get used to hearing it and it makes you know that the diff is working. thats the same with locked diffs, the scuffing sound makes u no its working, just give it a littlem ore revs than usual to park and it will be fine, turning circles arent at all changed it just scuffs when you do it. the only is usually needed to unbind the diff after you have parked, easily done, just drive straight forward then reverse back again. i dont see the big deal with understeer either, my cars never seemed to understeer with lockers, just over steered, maybe cos i ran wider tracks on the front, or a fair bit of camber im not sure, but i never experienced more understeer with my locked diffs over open diffs

Quote:
Wrong answer.
If you understand how the Locker works, you can see that it simulates the function of a regular diff by releasing the faster turning axle from the dog clutch. The faster turning axle actually turns faster than the diff center & receives NO mechanical drive at all. It actually freewheels.
If the single driven wheel should slip [that would normally be the inner wheel when turning] say in the wet or mud, the increased speed of the diff catches up with the freewheeling axle in the distance of a single dog segment, & it becomes locked together with the other axle to provide locked drive to both axles.

I tend to agree with your observations about it, & they were included in my list of reasons why we did not adopt them in some of our vehicles to improve off road capability. Just too dangerous for the average driver.

I've never seen a detroit locker unit, and assumed they are the same as an open diff when unlocked. For what you're saying to be true, the Detroit centre would have to completely disconnect one axle from the crownwheel - is that what happens in there?

In desperation, after buggering my trick 4.9/LSD combo, I ran a welded centre last time, out at Manfeild.
It was embarrasingly slow and pushy, probably lost around 3 seconds a lap.
I may persevere with it a little more, it's in an alloy head and saves around 7kg of unsprung weight.

I suspect that it'd be OK, if I was running relatively narrow tyres, but with 11inch rears on it, the front tyres get a really hard time and are toast after 3 laps...

yeah, definitely requires a different suspension setup to compensate for the understeer. Slightly stiffer rear rebound (don't go crazy or you'll get some other very undesireable characteristics) and rear sway bar would help take some load off the inside rear and reduce the unwanted effect of resistance to turn while not reducing rear grip. I found more front camber and castor helped significantly, but that's on radials, I have no experience on slicks. You could probably run a bit more rear brake too, as I found my bias felt alot more forward than before (wouldn't trail-brake like it did before), but I don't have any method of adjusting bias.

The people that have crashes with a locked diffs are probably the sort of idiots that would probably have crashes regardless.
It only takes a little bit of brains to realise that in the wet you have little rear end grip and to drive accordingly.

i dont like welded diffs, that said i havent had one myself, and for that reason

from a rallying point of view, at the end of the day i dont think it makes the car any quicker, yeah sure they get big slides through the corner, but they are forced to do this on every corner and as we should all know it's not nesecarily the fastet way through a corner

i prefer the sprung load locker which i use
at $250 it's not as good as an lsd, but it's a step closer than a single spinner

The V8 supercars have spools that are the same as a welded diff (just lighter) and they can be made to corner very well by raising or lowering the roll centre to produce the required degree of unloading of the rear inside tyre.
I like lockers, but still believe a good LSD is faster on a tighter track.

i totally agree with that, i would love a good tight lsd but i havent got the money and if i did i would rather spend it on other things cos the locker is doing just fine for what i want