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Differentials are an entire world of their own. I feel like I could spend 5 years researching diffs and still not make a fully-informed decision Cusco: MZ-vs-RS-vs-Hybrid? And given it's

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Old 03-12-2014, 09:50 PM   #1 (permalink)
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Differentials are an entire world of their own. I feel like I could spend 5 years researching diffs and still not make a fully-informed decision

Cusco: MZ-vs-RS-vs-Hybrid? And given it's easy to customize before I put it in for the first time, any reason to re-arrange the disks for less-than-full lockup, etc?
OS Giken: reputable, pricey, solid option, not much else to say?
Nismo: GT Pro - Even more expensive than OSG, somehow? Their marketing materials do sound nice, but I don't know if it's that nice.

I had decided a while back (just based on internet research) to skip over the Quaife just because the one-wheel-lift thing seems shitty, and as I get further in my suspension setup, that scenario gets more and more likely. But now I've noticed that there's another torsen type called WaveTrac that claims to be very similar but eliminates the unloaded-wheel problem. That makes me wonder if I should give it a shot. The huge upside of the torsen-style ones is they're basically maintenance-free. Just change fluid once in a while and ignore it. If the WaveTrac really gets rid of the Quaife's main negative point, how much is all that 1.5-way-clutched maintenance worth to me? Does the 1.5-way really feel/drive that much better than a torsen?

About the only thing another evening of research has sorted out for me is I probably don't want any of the Carbon options (from Nismo or Carbonetics). Once you get through all the marketing BS, the bottom line is all the Carbon surfaces do is reduce noise and maybe modify fluid/clutch life, but the metal discs perform better.
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Old 03-12-2014, 11:52 PM   #2 (permalink)
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Originally Posted by wstar View Post
Differentials are an entire world of their own. I feel like I could spend 5 years researching diffs and still not make a fully-informed decision

Cusco: MZ-vs-RS-vs-Hybrid? And given it's easy to customize before I put it in for the first time, any reason to re-arrange the disks for less-than-full lockup, etc?
OS Giken: reputable, pricey, solid option, not much else to say?
Nismo: GT Pro - Even more expensive than OSG, somehow? Their marketing materials do sound nice, but I don't know if it's that nice.

I had decided a while back (just based on internet research) to skip over the Quaife just because the one-wheel-lift thing seems shitty, and as I get further in my suspension setup, that scenario gets more and more likely. But now I've noticed that there's another torsen type called WaveTrac that claims to be very similar but eliminates the unloaded-wheel problem. That makes me wonder if I should give it a shot. The huge upside of the torsen-style ones is they're basically maintenance-free. Just change fluid once in a while and ignore it. If the WaveTrac really gets rid of the Quaife's main negative point, how much is all that 1.5-way-clutched maintenance worth to me? Does the 1.5-way really feel/drive that much better than a torsen?

About the only thing another evening of research has sorted out for me is I probably don't want any of the Carbon options (from Nismo or Carbonetics). Once you get through all the marketing BS, the bottom line is all the Carbon surfaces do is reduce noise and maybe modify fluid/clutch life, but the metal discs perform better.
Like you. Everytime I do reseach on diffs. I end up with a headache.
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Old 03-13-2014, 02:04 AM   #3 (permalink)
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In my opinion depending what you want to do if its about track stuff I strongly suggest a clutch lsd in general. As far as longevity with Cusco from what ive seen in the pass on my350z dot com . There has been a lot of them running it for years including drift . I havent seen anybody as far I can tell having to rebuilt it... what they endup doing is changing the locking ratio from 60 to 80 then 100.... dont forget also on the cusco RS you can switch it to a 2way if you want. I cant say for the other one..

The nismos lsd was also quite popular in the pass because it use to be very cheap 800-900$ the only issue some guys were complaining about the noise of it more than other clutch lsd...

I can say for the os giken. They are a brand name and all I know is some guys had problem getting info and parts to tune the lsd.

This is why I went to a cusco rs .. 2 of my friend is running it . One use to have a kaaz which is another clutch lsd in similar price range as the cusco .. unless it changed in the last year or two.
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Old 03-13-2014, 11:18 AM   #4 (permalink)
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From what I've gathered:

OS Giken - Smooth, Reliable and most expensive
Nismo/Cusco - Practically the same. Might want use WPC treatment on clutch packs. Parking lot speed/turns will make the car sound broken
Quaife/WaveTrac/Torsen - Might boil fluid, a little cheaper than the clutch types, low maintenance, quiet/unnoticeable.

From speaking with you, you said you wanted to remove the rear sway bar, and that would help with getting the rear wheel to droop more and stay on the ground.

The purple Z had a Cusco, dunno if you heard it or not.
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Old 03-13-2014, 02:56 PM   #5 (permalink)
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From what I've gathered:

OS Giken - Smooth, Reliable and most expensive
Nismo/Cusco - Practically the same. Might want use WPC treatment on clutch packs. Parking lot speed/turns will make the car sound broken
Don't care about noise, since this car isn't driven on the street at all anymore.

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Quaife/WaveTrac/Torsen - Might boil fluid, a little cheaper than the clutch types, low maintenance, quiet/unnoticeable.
Well, either way I'll probably do a diff cooler, though it may come later than the diff install itself. That aside, though: if we ignore the wheel droop issue, does the torsen-style action actually perform/feel better or worse on-track than a 1.5-way clutched when cornering hard? I know that's a somewhat-subjective question, but it seems to be the key question in deciding whether the maintenance/cost/complexity of the 1.5-way is worth it, and nobody ever answers it in a straightforward manner. I'm willing to give WaveTrac the benefit of the doubt on killing the wheel droop issue, their solution sounds reasonable.

Quote:
From speaking with you, you said you wanted to remove the rear sway bar, and that would help with getting the rear wheel to droop more and stay on the ground.
Yeah, I guess that's true as well. Although, on the other hand, in general with my JRZ's there's very little available droop in the rear to begin with. When I put the car on the lift the fronts droop as expected, but the rears droop very little, relatively speaking. I'm guessing if I up the spring rates a bit when I remove that bar, that will help a little as well.
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Old 03-13-2014, 04:28 PM   #6 (permalink)
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Don't care about noise, since this car isn't driven on the street at all anymore.

That aside, though: if we ignore the wheel droop issue, does the torsen-style action actually perform/feel better or worse on-track than a 1.5-way clutched when cornering hard? I know that's a somewhat-subjective question, but it seems to be the key question in deciding whether the maintenance/cost/complexity of the 1.5-way is worth it, and nobody ever answers it in a straightforward manner. I'm willing to give WaveTrac the benefit of the doubt on killing the wheel droop issue, their solution sounds reasonable.


.
This mean using the Z on the track only , then a clutch LSD is the only way to go !
If it was 50//50 street /track then maybe yeah that wavetrack could fine good enough

don't worry on the maintenance cost on the Cusco,,, like I said I haven't seen/heard anyone yet having to rebuilt one.
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Old 03-13-2014, 04:34 PM   #7 (permalink)
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This has been a really informative thread on the subject (well, after you filter out the stupid posts): Quaife vs Wavetrac vs OS Giken
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Old 03-13-2014, 06:09 PM   #8 (permalink)
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How convenient that this post appeared today!
MY350Z.COM Forums - View Single Post - New NASA Class for 2012: Spec Z

Track cars still have to maneuver around the grid or your driveway etc! Still worth noting minor inconveniences that will always exist.
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Old 03-13-2014, 11:34 PM   #9 (permalink)
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Heh, I had just about convinced myself I should just go Cusco RS, then you post this pro-WaveTrac link :P I guess, at the end of the day, I'm not really competitive at this point anyways. Best case maybe I start doing NASA TT late this year or early next year, but even then I'm not planning on actually winning anything anytime soon. So maybe I'll do the WaveTrac for now, and if it's really inferior on laptimes it's not the end of the world. If a year or two from now I actually think it's holding me back, I could always upgrade at that point. Lower-maintenance is worth something. I already spend an inordinate amount of time on car prep stuff.
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Old 03-14-2014, 09:53 AM   #10 (permalink)
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Posting this here for posterity: since I'll probably have to buy a 6MT pumpkin for whatever diff anyways, I've been researching my rear-end ratio options and trying to rationalize the differences on-track between the options. (Keep in mind the 7AT's transmission ratios are substantially different than 6MT...).

Stock 7AT is 3.357, Stock 6MT is 3.692, and there's also a 4.08 available that people have done. I'm estimating my tires at 789 revs-per-mile for 275/35R18 (although it will vary by tire options of course), and the 7AT's first 5 gears are 4.924, 3.194, 2.043, 1.412, 1.000 - I hope to rarely ever use 6, and never 7, as they get weaker up there. I guess we can pretty much ignore first gear too, I can't imagine needing it on any track.

Redline speeds in gears 2-5:
3.357: 52, 82, 118, 167 (current)
3.692: 47, 74, 107, 152
4.080: 43, 67, 97, 137

Thinking about straight lengths and speeds at my most-typical local tracks: generally I'm in 3 and 4 almost exclusively right now with only the big straight at TWS requiring a move to 5th. My end-speed on that straight is ~135 now on a good lap, but that might get higher as I learn to exit onto it faster, and it's almost certainly a bit higher in the less-common CW direction, so probably plan on 150 as a soft "top speed" that I'll rarely exceed anywhere (and if I do, it won't be for long or matter much). On most of the more-typical straights (e.g. back straight of MSR-H, back straight of TWS), on a good lap I'm sometimes bumping the redline in 4th right at the end, so ~115-120, but it's not worth upshifting before turn-in currently (but I might have to if I get faster eventually). Only COTA has really required 2nd gear, and I won't hit that often.

4.08 seems like it's not a good option right off the bat. I'd be using up a substantial portion of 5th gear on a regular basis (multiple times per lap typically), and I'd be shifting to 6th halfway down the big straight at TWS going CW eventually. I'm not sure I trust the strength of 6 or 7 on this trans to be in them hard every lap on my closest course

3.692 is a little bit of a wash with stock on shift points, maybe slightly better. I'd definitely be able to carry through some corners staying in 4th where I currently have to drop to 3rd to keep revs up, and that's worth a lot. However, straights that I can currently stay in 4th through (TWS back, MSR back) would now definitely require a 4->5 upshift partway down the straight. 5th should last me all the way to the end of the big TWS straight.

I used to think the universal "Lower is better" argument for rear-end ratios only really applied to drag racing, but I finally managed to convince myself it's true in the general case for road-racing as well (ignoring shift-points above). What it boils down to is this: the lower the rear end ratio, the shorter each transmission gear's speed range gets. The shorter the transmission gears get, the more time you spend higher in the power band (given equivalent shifting strategies using both rear ends). So, I think I'll take the stock 6MT ratio when I switch diffs.
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Old 03-14-2014, 06:38 PM   #11 (permalink)
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I just realized there's a 3.917 gear available from Tomei as well, and the 4.08 is actually 4.083 (not that it matters rounded to mph below):

Redline speeds in gears 2-5:
3.357: 52, 82, 118, 167 (current)
3.692: 47, 74, 107, 152
3.917: 44, 70, 101, 143
4.083: 43, 67, 97, 137

I think I may have to do some more analysis, since the gaps between the trans gear ratios aren't linear, either. Maybe somehow graph this all out into a map of overlapping gear powerbands. Then I could figure out, essentially, my ideal shift points (probably all at redline, but it doesn't hurt to check), and then figure out whether the widening gear gaps in the higher gears means I'm losing effective power by pushing some of my "normal" speeds out into that range, and whether the torque gains from the gearing offset that or not at various speeds. Then maybe I could also pull in some notion of average speeds from my track data to find out which ranges are more important as well, if it comes to that.
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Old 03-15-2014, 11:26 AM   #12 (permalink)
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Now that I've tinkered with the data a bunch, all I've done is further convince myself that lower is always better So much better in fact, maybe it's worth the risk of destroying 6th gear on my trans just to put 4.08's in there. It can always be rebuilt

Contrary to my intuition, the gears don't get wider as you step up, they get narrower when graphed as Horsepower vs Speed. In other words, the higher you are in the gearbox, the less rpm/power drop there is when you upshift again. This is especially true if I can move some of my shifts out into the 6th gear range, because the 5->6 shift is *very* short. Here it is visually:



And again with only the outer two datapoints (less clutter):




Note there are a lot of loose approximations in the data that lead to these graphs (e.g. I didn't have exact-enough dyno figures per-RPM and didn't feel like interpolating, so I stole someone else's dyno graph that had nice grid lines - but the rough shape is all that's important there).
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Old 03-15-2014, 11:49 AM   #13 (permalink)
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Dude you really inspire me with the things you do and the thought you put in it.

But when and where would you need 6th. Isn't that like over 160? Super long straight away. For the other gears. I'd love to have it. Some tracks it would help. Others I assume it will be just another shift. But it's all a benefit.
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Old 03-16-2014, 12:50 PM   #14 (permalink)
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But when and where would you need 6th. Isn't that like over 160? Super long straight away.
I skipped over 1st gear in my graphs, so those peaks are gears 2-6 (the very end of the whole line is the redline in 6th). So, if drop down to 4.083 rear end, my 5->6 upshift will be at 137mph (probably more like 134, because I tend to short-shift a bit by default unless I'm really pushing it). I don't think I'll hit 6th at MSR-Houston with that ratio, but I probably will on TWS-CW and COTA under this setup, given the speed help from the lower gearing earlier in the straight. I almost wish I could go even lower and get to that very short 5->6 shift even more often. It seems there are, in fact, gear sets for 4.364 and 4.636, although I'm not 100% sure they're compatible on our 6MT-R200V rear end. Might be interesting to add that to my data as well...
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Old 03-15-2014, 12:17 PM   #15 (permalink)
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Having different rear diff setup does help on different track I used 3.91 and the 3.54 with good success
ive seen somebody with a 4.3 I should start looking for this for next year ! Depending on budget.
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