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Quaife Center Diff modding

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Canadian_CD9A

Supporting Member
1,077
833
Feb 10, 2012
Winnipeg, MB_Canada
I got bored and started thinking about how bad our center diff sucks and needs to get away from viscous and clutch-type setups. Yes, that leaves either an open diff (no), welded diff (hell no), and the equally sucktastic Quaife center. The issue with the Quaife, of course, is that it breaks the gear/housing when you look at it wrong. That's a shame because it otherwise fixes our inadequate center diff with an actual torque biasing setup. Given that our 4th gears are also known to suck, the fix is a straight cut gear and diff housing gear. Since we're already doing this, could we fix the Quaife's breakage problem by Boldting one with a straight cut 4th gear?
 
This idea progressed quickly actually, Matthias agreed to take a look at this as a possibility. A few Evo123 guys are going to pool funds to get a Quaife housing shipped to Germany, to see if a straight cut gear can be adapted.

If anyone has a Quaife in their closet that they removed before it grenaded, let me know! These might go back in style!
 
Cuscos are open (assuming you mean the tarmac), looking for a Torsen-style, because it's the next best thing to ACD. 3/S sounds even harder. It may be difficult, but heck, if it can make a Quaife reliable, I call it a winner. Never mind the $2,000 straight-cut conversion....
 
Old post from TRE:

Hello everyone -

This is Jon Ripple of T.R.E.

I rarely make posts here but I'd like to clarify some things.

Last winter we noticed that people were breaking their Quaife center diffs. We found that the backlash between the center diff and intermediate shaft is a little excessive. This will cause gear tooth breakage if and when the gears are heavily loaded. I've contacted Quaife USA and UK and explained to them why their diff is breaking. The backlash issue is the major problem followed by the heat treating. I discussed this problem with Mike W @ RRE and he talked Quaife USA into sending some DSM parts back to Quaife UK so they could see if anything wasn't to spec. After a while Quaife stated that yes there is some backlash but they have to leave it because they do not final grind the tooth profile after heat treating, leaving any distortion from the heat treating process. To allow for this distortion Quaife has elected to ride close to the acceptable limits for backlash. This will cause variances and the end result is some gear noise. Some of you may notice that after you've installed a Quaife you will here some gear whine, especially in 3rd gear - no load. This is the backlash issue.

What is my conclusion? If you launch your Mitsubishi AWD hard enough the Quaife center diff will eventually loose some teeth. Sorry guys but the teeth on your stock center diff are stronger. I've been in a lot of DSM gearboxes and rarely do I see busted teeth on the factory center diff gear.
 
There isn't enough rim strength in some spots on the queef. With that design there is not way to fix it. a tarmac is a better design.

I wasn't suggesting using a 3/s, but rather making one of that style.
 
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