Jsmply

Hey everyone, I'm about to pick up a ricks 4.56 diff from a local owner who is well trusted and it will be assembled again by the local gear mechanic who has done a lot of gear installs locally who had no issues.

The only wildcard here is that it is an AP2 diff, but when it was taken off the owners car (he supercharged it and does not want the gears as well) he sold/swapped the AP2 caps on it to a local owner who had an AP1. The theory here is that hardtopguy and a few others have now said that the AP2 diff caps are slightly reinforced.

This is not a big deal, I have new AP2 diff caps from hardtopguy . . . the only thing hardtopguy (Jeff) told me was to ask around if other people have successfully changed caps in diff housings as generally the housing and caps are machined together and mated to one another. The local gear mechanic who is doing the assembly for me was the one who also swapped the caps for the other AP1 owner and their car seems to be running without issue.

The one reassuring thing the gear mechanic told me was that what hardtopguy said was true that they typically are mated and its not common practice to change them . . .however he is confident it works without issue as he has done it in other s2000's before. He also said that if there was an issue he would know it right away in assembly so I don't have to worry about putting it on my car and then it falling apart. Jeff seemed to agree with the "knowing right away" part.

My question is, does anyone have any experiance changing diff caps with s2k diffs?

The diff will be:

AP2 Diff/Housing
Ricks 4.56 gears
New AP2 Caps (since the AP2 caps were removed from this one)
and ARP bolts for added reinforcement.

deathsled

lets just say this

if they were mated, wouldn't they have sold you a housing along with those new caps?

Jsmply

They came from hardtopguy, but he was the one that told me they are typically mated, but if the shop thought it would be okay then to go for it.