Dead Torsen photos

[Doug Chase]

I thought some of you may be interested in seeing how Torsens fail.

This unit is out of a '95 Porsche 968. It only has 17k miles on it, but this car has been an autocross car its whole life so those have been pretty hard miles.

I pulled transaxle because there was (a lot of) metal in the oil. Here's where it came from. Because of this, every bearing inside the gearbox was junk but luckily all the hard parts (besides the diff) were ok.

The assembled unit. Doesn't look bad:

Larger image: http://www.chaserace.com/forumphotos/torsen1.jpg


Close up of the working bits. You can see some wear on the spider gears.

Larger image: http://www.chaserace.com/forumphotos/torsen5.jpg


Ouch:

Larger image: http://www.chaserace.com/forumphotos/torsen6.jpg

[eHoward]

Thanks for sharing. If they're going to fail, that's where they are going to fail. The housing isn't the weak point. We actually manufactured the housing out of magnesium(stock is steel) for the FSAE car.

[Shaun41178(2)]

Damn thats awesome. Cool pics.

Forget torsen. I am just going to go weld my spider gears. Its cheaper and the Fiero owner way.

[The Dark Side of Will]

The crossed-axis Torsens like that one are not very strong.
The parallel axis diffs (some Torsens and all Quaifes) have much more total tooth contact area and are stronger.

Team Python blew up a 282 Torsen in their 4point9 AutoX car after a couple of seasons.

[The Dark Side of Will]

You took it apart because of a lot of metal in the oil? You didn't take it apart because of that horrible grinding noise every time the owner turned left? :scratch: :blah5:

[Doug Chase]

You took it apart because of a lot of metal in the oil? You didn't take it apart because of that horrible grinding noise every time the owner turned left? :scratch: :blah5:

That's why I drained the oil.