Differentials enable car’s drive wheels to rotate at slightly different speeds when power is applied, helping prevent wheel spin and limiting tire slippage. Unfortunately, many diffs don’t limit slippage to an exact point or ratio that could prove counterproductive when maneuvering around corners.
Mechanical limited slip differentials utilize helical gears or clutch packs (such as Auburn Gear’s innovative gear/cone diff) to generate friction, thus restricting torque transference to wheels with reduced traction. They’re commonly found on performance cars and hot hatchbacks.
Why You Need One
Differentials allow wheels to rotate at different speeds, an essential feature for effective steering. Furthermore, they help evenly distribute power among all four wheels and prevent one wheel from spinning when accelerating – but when driving on snowy, icy, sandy or muddy roads without limited slip differentials they become completely irrelevant.
Limited Slip Differeces (LSDs), provide an effective solution to this issue by restricting how much torque can be transferred from one wheel to another with reduced traction. They do this using various mechanisms that produce resisting torque between output shafts or within differential housings.
LSDs first became widely utilized during the 1930’s, and gained in prominence again during the muscle car era of the 1960’s when manufacturers produced cars with increasing power outputs that easily overrode any grip provided by narrow tires. Today, many high-performance vehicles come standard or optionally equipped with LSDs.
How They Work
Differentials are an integral component of your car’s ability to get power to the road. No matter if you’re driving on asphalt or snow, its purpose is the same – to transfer engine torque directly onto both wheels of your car’s drivetrain.
An open differential, such as you find in most cars today, will distribute all available power evenly to both wheels; if one starts slipping due to poor road conditions, its power won’t switch immediately – the diff simply redirects more to its nonsliding counterpart – leading to potentially detrimental shifts of traction and control for your car.
Limited-slip differentials (or LSDs), designed to restrict clutch slip between each half axle, offer an effective solution. LSDs work by restricting how much clutch slipage takes place between each half axle. Some are mechanical (like gear-type LSD) while others (eLSD or viscous diffs).
What They Can Do
A differential allows your car’s wheels to spin at different speeds so that when you turn, its outer drive wheel travels shorter distances and receives additional power to keep up. Without such an adaptation, the outer drive wheel would get pushed around more as your turn, potentially bucking or skidding across pavement surfaces as it turned.
Limited-slip differentials take this concept a step further by shifting torque that’s delivered to wheels with traction via either gears or clutches, popular among 60’s-70’s muscle car drivers such as Auburn Gear design which uses friction discs and springs that lock together when anticipating wheels with less traction.
Viscous LSDs utilize fluid and couplings that create resistance against independent rotation of axles in order to transmit power from one axle to the wheel more flexibly and with greater traction, making them suitable for track or racing applications with reduced lap times due to extra gripping power.
What to Avoid
Limited-slip differentials can be an excellent way to help performance cars put more power down on the road and aid off-road handling in slippery conditions, but it is essential that drivers understand its limitations before selecting one for their vehicle.
LSDs can be costly to develop and install, which explains why you will only find them on high-performance cars or hot hatchback versions of compact family vehicles. They offer limited traction on snow and ice and should never replace an excellent set of winter tires – if used under these conditions make sure your diff has plenty of studs as slippage on ice can be devastating; for an alternative option consider getting a traction control system like Eaton Posi or Detroit Truetrac to limit slippage by allocating more torque towards wheels with more grip by shifting more torque onto wheels with more grip –
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