Chevy Differentials. Jefferson Bryant

      CarTech®, Inc.

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      © 2015 by Jefferson Bryant

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission from the Publisher. All text, photographs, and artwork are the property of the Author unless otherwise noted or credited.

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      All trademarks, trade names, model names and numbers, and other product designations referred to herein are the property of their respective owners and are used solely for identification purposes. This work is a publication of CarTech, Inc., and has not been licensed, approved, sponsored, or endorsed by any other person or entity. The Publisher is not associated with any product, service, or vendor mentioned in this book, and does not endorse the products or services of any vendor mentioned in this book.

      Layout by Monica Seiberlich

      ISBN 978-1-61325-268-0

      Item No. SA369

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

      Written, edited, and designed in the U.S.A.

       Front Cover: General Motors equipped select muscle cars and certain trucks with the Chevy 12-bolt axle assembly. This proven limited-slip axle delivers exceptional durability and traction. It is also relatively easy and straightforward to rebuild. (Photo Courtesy Tony E. Huntimer)

       Title Page: You can see the Chevy 10-bolt carrier inside the axle housing. When disassembling a limited-slip differential, you remove the C-Clip to remove the axle shafts.

       Back Cover Photos

       Top Left: The center pin is a potential failure point for the carrier. In this case, the pin broke around the locking bolt hole, allowing it to slide out. Luckily, the driver was just barely rolling and the differential was not under an enormous load, otherwise much more damage could have been done. When the pin came out, it locked up the differential. This could have split the case of the housing if it had happened at speed.

       Top Right: Ring gears convert the engine’s rotation to forward motion, but there is more to selecting a gear set than just what size you think you need.

       Bottom Left: The spring pack is used to keep the tension on the clutches. Most GM limited-slips use four springs and two plates, but some use an S-spring. You can tune the level of slippage with the springs. Stock Eaton GM limited-slip differentials use 400-pound springs.

       Bottom Right: Here is a bad wear pattern, showing that the pinion is too close to the ring gear. Note the hard edge on the coast side; it looks like a shark fin. This would be very noisy and generate a lot of heat. The answer is a thinner pinion shim.

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