Harpoon

Will a performance tire (thinking about the Advan A048's) in and of itself cause any sort of premature wear on the differential? I know all the other abuse will, but will just the fact that you're running a stickier tire cause issues?

jaws

The OEM tires are already a "high performance" tire and quite sticky. I can't see any correlation between tire construction and differential wear.

Harpoon

There is a big difference between the OEM tires and a tire like the A048. But I'll expand my point - "Is there any risk to the diff from running racing slicks like the Hankook's?".

INDYMAC

Assuming that you still have a clutch delay valve in your MY05, there should be adequate differential protection no matter what tires of similar size and weight you want to run. If you drag race, I'd be more concerned about the clutch than the diff in a MY05.

FO2K

Stickier tires will put more stress on the drive train, but if the car is carefully driven it shouldn't be a problem.

When it was popular to put V8's in Austin Healys, people ran harder rubber so they would get wheel spin instead of a blown differential.

SpitfireS

FO2K Posted on Mar 20 2006, 03:24 PM

Wouldn't that be to handle the added horsepower?

A stickier tire IMO will not allow the power to dissapear into slipping the tire so the power has to go somewhere else, into acceleration and the rest of the drivetrain including the clutch & diff. I think in that case the clutch takes the hardest punch.

Is Harpoon talking about the limited slip function of the diff?
It will be working harder but still doing what it is designed to do so I would change oil more frequent and get the stronger parts as discribed in other posts.

FO2K

In most of the AH V8 conversions, you kept the bell housing and transmission with the V8, the differential was stock and the weak point of the modified car.

Hard tires (not at all sticky) allowed the tires to spin, thus relieving the stress on the drive train. The clutch that came with V8 motors was overkill for the lightweight cars and were not a problem.

A few people put ford rear ends in their cars and were able to put stickier tires on the car.

Iceman1

to answer the original question, to my knowledge... the tires on their own will not significantly hurt the diff... its the application... what your gonna do with the car... if your running R-Compounds and auto-x'ing or road racing, it shouldnt have much of an effect on the diff... if your putting on drag radials and drag racing, then yes... it can put heavy stress on the diff... the diff's weakness is in dealing with the instantaneous torque applied to it...as generally seen in the launch of a drag race.