GI: Affordable Helical LSD's for the G-series!!

[therieldeal]

oh dear. 126 pound press frame + 2nd floor apartment = teh sux0rz

[atomicEGT]

That is what garages are for, geniusaur.

[therieldeal]

garage = full of car + unheated

[chief tool]

Yeah, I have the opposite problem, no a/c in the garage! it was 41degC (106F) here today

[jackscort]

mmm toasty

Why don't you try out a torpedo heater. They come in propane and kerosine. I am borrowing one from my uncle and it gets my gararge to 70 degrees! There was nothing like going from working in the winter with no gararge and a dirt driveway to a heated gararge. I keep the thing under the garge door so it sucks outside air and put a peice of plywood under the rest of the door. It takes costs about 1.50 per hour to run.

My beers are out there before hand near freezing.

[atomicEGT]

garage = full of car + unheated

Sissy. :p

[Fowljesse]

The "full of car" part may inhibit it's use
My friend's shop I work on my car in has a couple of big ones. They're awesome, and use diesel. They should be perfect for bending the Polycarbonate to make rear windows.

[therieldeal]

yeah... my garage is the perfect size for storing my escort and (most of) my crap... but it leaves no room to work .

plus i'm in the middle bay of a 5 bay building... the roof slants down from front to back, and the divider walls are only the height of the rear wall. any heat i make would float up and into the rest of the building...

regardless.. i got the press set up (in my living room, lol) and the bearings pressed on no problem. i'm heading over to my dad's house in a few to test fit everything and take some more pictures for you guys. his garage is unheated as well... but at least there is room to work

[atomicEGT]

The "full of car" part may inhibit it's use
My friend's shop I work on my car in has a couple of big ones. They're awesome, and use diesel. They should be perfect for bending the Polycarbonate to make rear windows.

Put the car outside, durrrrr

[therieldeal]

the transmission is broken! sure it will still start up and drive, but theres bits of 3rd gear floating around in there.

test fitting went pretty well, pics to follow later tonight.

[atomicEGT]

Put it in neutral and push! You're making this way more complicated than it needs to be.

[therieldeal]

if you recall, there is a hill right in front of my garage.... i'd never be able to get it back in there without help.

[chief tool]

you could just drain all the gearbox oil out...that'd stop the pieces of gear being picked up the by the oil....after all your only moving the car a few feet, the gearbox will do that with no oil...

or you can do what I do and bolt a 12volt boat winch to that garage floor, so you can roll the car out and winch it back in, when the car is not driveable.



My garage is not big enough to have the car in it an work at the same time, this is how I got around the problem.

[therieldeal]

garage floor is dirt thats a great idea though!

i'm working on a big post right now with details on test fitment... stay tuned

[therieldeal]

below are some photos from test fitting the diffs . if you have any questions feel free to ask.

i test fitted both diffs in two different transmissions:

95 escort gt (same as BG pro LX, other early g-series)


97 escort lx (same as KL V6, BJ protege, Kia BP, ZX2, other later g-series)


These two transmissions represent all the major changes throughout the years - including long and short secondary shafts and both types of shifter gates.

Everything fit perfectly aside from some clearance problems between the ring gear bolts and the shifter gate (same issue that happens with the quaife). Let me explain:

Here is the 97 shifter gate:


Here is the 95 shifter gate:


The honda ring gear bolts clear the 95 gate just fine. They do not clear the 97 gate at all. Two options here... grind down the bolt head, or grind down the shifter gate. With the quaife, the studs come through the opposite direction, and it's a nut that hits the shifter gate. Because of this, you cant grind it, you have to modify the shifter gate. In this case we have chosen to use bolts (rather than studs and nuts), so i was able to modify the bolt head no problem. The heads on these have that slight raised ring on the head, so i simply ground that off. Here is a video of the diff being rotated, you can hear the un-ground bolts hitting the shifter gate.

Stock bolt head:



Ground down bolt head:




Because the holes in the ring gear are larger than the honda ring gear bolts, Mfactory will be providing us with custom shouldered bolts (check back a page for a photo). I'll simply ask them to make the heads no more than 7mm thick, and as far as i can tell there should be zero fitment problems in any g-series transmission.

The only other potential "issue" i ran into was that the axles had a little in and out play, like 1/16-1/8". I checked a 100% stock transmission and found that it had a similar amount of play, maybe just a smidge less. I don't have a gauge to actually measure endplay (to accurately compare), but i'm fairly certain it's not an issue.

The axle seal thats in there is a cheap one without the protruding dust guard... a real mazda one with the dust guard would stick up farther. Even with it pulled out as shown in the photo, the seal is still going to seal against the axle shaft and should not leak. The axles do snap in nice and tight (as they should) and the splines seem to fit perfectly. I had no issues installing or removing axles with the transmission on the bench.

sorry again about the crappy photos... i actually borrowed a real camera today but my girlfriend managed to loan it to me with a dead battery.

one more random shot i took - plenty of clearance with 1st gear: