Front diff material?

[Bimmer_man]

So I've been wondering what the metal our front diffs are made out of. The gears not the case. I want to see the cost to have new gears made from better stock. And if I get them made and they can take some serious hard launches I may be able to do something with it.

[nando]

steel?

[jalopi]

every gear i can think of is made of steel, just different alloys on the nicer applications. might be able to get away with having your existing gears further heat treated.

the better question is: what fails on the front diffs when they break? if you end up having new gears made, that's probably what the manufacturer is gonna need to know to make em stronger

[nando]

it's usually the spider gears, not the R&P.

the front diff case is pretty small, so significant improvements are going to be difficult and expensive. the simplest thing to do would be to add 2 more spider gears which is what the guy with the 1000hp ix did.

[TehRaydarlover]

I shot everything with an XRF Analyzer a while ago at work. I wasn't sure if the gears had any sort of coating so I used pieces that had been cut in half to get the base metal. Everything was tested multiple times, these were the most consistent results.

Diff carrier: 1215 (Free machine high sulfur steel)
Spider gear: TS-S5
Crown gear: A485-1

I can test hardness at lunch today.

Ray

[TehRaydarlover]

The carrier is around 275 BHN
The spider gear is around 600 BHN
The crown gear is around 450 BHN

Ray

[AndrewBird]

Hardened tool steel. Not gonna get much better than that. At this point, making them large would probably be the only way to make them stronger, which there is no room for.