Typhoon

I heard from someone that an lsd isnt that nice of a thing on your drive shaft, and if used enough it can rip it apart? Is there any truth to that stament? If it is bad for your drivetrain is it worth the extra risk and would an upgrade solve the problem?

The_Instigator

Not true. The only time youd have to worry about your axles is if you had a lot of power (turbo) and really sticky tires (slicks) and were launching as hard as possible (drag racing). For daily driving and road racing it will improve performance and wont affext the longevity of any of your parts.

TheQuietThings

it shouldnt affect the life of the car at all.

If anything, its probably a benefit to your motor mounts since youll be experiencing less wheel hop and wheel spin.

Typhoon

ah ok thanks a lot guys, becuase i really wanted that lsd i heard it does wonders for corners and helps for drag a little too - although i care less about that

raamaudio

Some of this is covered but some terms here are not quite correct.

A FWD car does not have what is normally considered a drive shaft, it has drive axles more commonly refered to as half shafts among other names.

In a way an LSD could cause more wear since without one, if a wheel spins all the power goes to that wheel and you are not stressing anything except maybe reving to high or burning some rubber.

With LSD the power transfers(generally speaking) to the wheel that is not spinning so it will see some stress as it is actually being used to propel the car now instead of just doing not much of anything.

Now add sticky tires, more power, etc, you have more stress on the axles and tranny but not excessive unless you are really going nuts with power and tires, the stock parts can handle quite alot of both

LSD will not do much about wheel hop as far as a cure, in fact it can cause more in some circumstances because instead of just wheel spin without LSD say on slippery surfaces, you may get enough bit on the the same surfaces to induce axle and suspention windup, which is what causes wheel hop. Having enough traction to torque the axle, etc, then slipping a bit and untorquing, back and forth like that, results in wheel hop which is very tough on your whole drivetrain.

In some circumstances LSD may help deal with some wheel hop but the real cure for that is motor mounts or a torque damper, motor mounts being a beter performance option than torque damper but may induce more noise.

My last turbo car had 250WHP, we ran it on 235 wide DOT race tires(even on the street) and it had LSD and eurathane engine mounts that we made ourselves. We had zero wheel hop under any circumstance and very little torque steer as well. It was FWD, it was a Matrix that was very quick in SM class SCCA autocrosses, what we are building our tC for now and in fact, taking the tranny apart to install the Phantom Grip LSD they made for us

Rick