ItalianBucwheat

Ok what exactly goes bad in the s2000 rear diff? Before it blows up it seems
most get a noise. Is it the bearings that go bad then causing the lock up and a boom. Or is it the LSD that goes bad and then boom. I have a slight noise
coming from my rear end. It sorta sounds like some sand in a coffee can or like the faucet of a sink is on ever so slightly(bearing?). Hard to hear with the top down but can be heard with the top up. Recently when the car warms up I do get another noise a slight whirling sound with clutch in or out when rolling ,decelerating or accelerating at any speed which i am pretty sure is my diff telling me not much time left sonny!. Ok So I am goin to 4.77 from a 4.44 gear. When its open I plan on replacing all three bearings. Should I get a new LSD? What else should I consider replacing. Seems to me replacing the whole diff is a waste of alot of parts that don't need replacing. Any input would be awesome! Please no take it to the dealer. I have no warranty left.

Besides the bearings , the pinion, the ring gear and the LSD. What else can take a crap in the diff. If ya repalce these parts good as almost new?

RazorV3

kind of off-topic(sorry) but do you race a lot(like drag racing,etc)? im just curious.

ItalianBucwheat

Alot of street racing. But not many clutch drops. Well not many to me. Maybe
12 drops the whole life of the car. Alot of second gear downs shifts at about 50 mph. I got 20,000 miles out of my first set of rear tires. Oh And I forgot to mention alot of Spraying. I give my diff alot of abuse no question. Actually surprised it held up so well for so many miles (37,000). If ya play ya gotta pay. I just don't want to pay more than i have to!

Wesmaster

I've had / seen / heard of various types of failures. To sum up here are some scenarios.

1. Ring and Pinion Gear Failure
Teeth on either the Ring or Pinion gear break off. This can cause a very nasty metal scraping noise, it can also cause some clunking noises. It is possible that this sound can go away or become less noticable after the point of the first breakage...only to come back and haunt you when it REALLY goes bad. In my case I originally had a nasty sound after a strong downshift into 1st. The noise got real bad and I limped the car home. While driving home the noise sorta went away, but I got a clunking on occasion while going straight (not the differential). So I took the car into the dealership and they didn't hear the noise. I continued to drive the car and on a hard 1-2 shift the "real" failure occured. 1/4 of my pinion gear was sheered off and caused damage to the ring gear as well. A big nasty mess of metal was everywhere but it was contained, just the ring and pinion gear had damage.

2. Bearing Cap Failure
With hard shifting or most likely launching of the car the bearing caps can snap in half. The bearing caps are holding everything (Ring and Pinion Gear and Differential) in place. If the bearing caps breaks the failure could be as severe as the ring gear busting a hole in the differential housing along with everything on the inside becoming soup. It could be as "minor" as just the bearing caps breaking and the differential eating itself up (what Comptech said happened to their car a few years back). The worse of the scenarios happened to me and it's an immediate issue, car cannot be driven, game over. This failure can also cause axles to break. I do not know the symantics of how but it happened to me.

3. Differential Failure.
This seems to happen on occasion as well, but I do not have any experience with this. I do not know how this happens or what it feels like. This would probably be the cheapest of all the failures.

Squeezer

i sheared about 1/4 of the teeth off of my pinion gear.

hokiemax

so r u guys saying hard downshifts over a period of time can cause differential failures?

RazorV3

if you rev match perfectly, you shouldn't be putting extra stress on the drivetrain...in this case, the transmission and flywheel will be spinning at the same speed and this is the ideal scenario.

unfortunately, there are some s2000 owners out there who NEVER revmatch(blipping the throttle b/w downshifts OR upshifts if you shift slowly). what they do is just select the lower gear and let go of the clutch, now the engine has to manually play "catch-up" and match the speed of the transmission. the gear shift will be very jerky, you will waer out your clutch PLUS the extra stress on teh whole drivetrain.

hokiemax

[QUOTE]Originally posted by RazorV3
[B]


if you rev match perfectly, you shouldn't be putting extra stress on the drivetrain...in this case, the transmission and flywheel will be spinning at the same speed and this is the ideal scenario.

unfortunately, there are some s2000 owners out there who NEVER revmatch(blipping the throttle b/w downshifts OR upshifts if you shift slowly).

ItalianBucwheat

I rev match. But learned heel toe and rev matching on my s2000
so I am not the prettiest rev matcher but getting better.

Bret

[QUOTE]Originally posted by RazorV3
[B]what they do is just select the lower gear and let go of the clutch, now the engine has to manually play "catch-up" and match the speed of the transmission.