The ring gear also shows a rough chamfer and sharp edges of the teeth.
As we started to hand polish the teeth, we can see the rounding of the sharp edges, especially down at the root of the gear teeth, will greatly improve the strength of our gears.
After a little time at the polishing wheel, it’s important to inspect each tooth to make sure nothing is missed during the repetitive work. If you look closely, you’ll find a couple teeth that were missed (and later fixed).
After deburring the gears, they were ready to be WPC treated.
The ring and pinion are some of the best components in a car that can be WPC Treated. Reducing the significant friction (and heat) that happens in this gear makes it yield one of the greatest returns in terms of increased power, longevity and reduced wear and temperature.
WPC is a surface treatment and NOT a coating. Bombarding metal with special media at high velocities normalizes and flattens out the microscopic peaks and valleys of a surface and creates micro-dimples that retains oil molecules to further reduce friction between two sliding surfaces. It also improves surface hardness, provides a highly compressive residual stress at the surface, improves abrasion resistance, and increases durability as well as reducing friction. We are big fans of WPC treating engine and drivetrain components.
11 comments
Looks like a win-win upgrade (adding a clutch-type LSD, reducing the assembly’s weight, and improving durability). Really enjoying this project – thanks for sharing all the progress!
It isn’t a clutch LSD. He literally describes it as a gear LSD.
Facepalm. Not good reading comprehension on my part. Thanks for clarifying.
It’s always great to hear Mario’s named mentioned from TSR. He’s an artist with a welder. I love all the work he has done for the Datsun community.
This thing will be a monster! I appreciate all the updates.
Awesome to see the attention to detail on the ring and pinion gears! All that work will increase the fatigue life by magnitudes.
Love it. I’m still waiting to see a brake rotor WPC treated to see how much longer the brake distances would be.
Whats the difference in length, axle centre to driveshaft flange between the two diffs? Currently have an aftermarket clutch type diff in the OEM housing that I don’t really trust behind a T56 Magnum. It’d be a shame to bin/remake the carbon driveshaft shaft…….they look pretty close!
The Ford Explorer 8.8″ diff flange (using the Ronin mount) is 0.425″ rearward/closer to the axle centerline than stock. It sounds like your best bet is to get a 0.425″ spacer to adapt your driveshaft to the Ford 8.8 diff flange.
Perfect – thanks Billy. That’s better than trying to go the other way! Looking forward to your next instalment.
While the out side of the assembly might be larger, it’s no guarantee of greater strength. A measurement of the gears and the bearings would be needed to make that claim. The fact the Ford unit is lighter is also a factor. Also the original mounting with the PPF is quite strong, as the lever arm of the PPF is much longer than the bushings located right at the companion flange.