Step by Step - Installing an LSD into your open diff by JMortensen

4 minute read

Step by Step - Installing an LSD into your open diff 

Compliments of JMortensen @ http://forums.hybridz.org

3-11-2007

1. Remove diff (If you can't figure this one out, take your car to a shop and pay them to do the whole thing for you)
2. Remove cover
3. Mark left and right caps and also note top and bottom
4. Check backlash
5. Remove bearing caps
6. Remove carrier and ring gear
7. Keep left and right side carrier shims straight (I zip tied one side together, there were only 3 in my diff)
8. Remove ring gear bolts and ring gear from carrier.
9. Press new bearings onto new carrier
10. Loctite ring gear bolts and install ring gear onto LSD (this is where you would use the ring gear bolt spacers if you made them). Torque to 43-51 lb/ft for 10mm ring gear bolts, 65-72 lb/ft for 12mm ring gear bolts
11. Reinstall carrier into housing with shims.
12. Reinstall main caps on the correct side and rightside up. Torque spec is again 65-72 lb/ft
13. Verify that backlash didn't change
14. Reinstall cover
15. Reinstall diff
16. Add fluid
17. Accelerate out of corners like you never could in your Z before...

It's been my experience that the backlash doesn't change notably. It changed .0005" on my own diff, and I've never come across any posts from someone whose backlash needed to be readjusted after installing the LSD.

If the backlash did change more than .002 or so, then you just move the carrier to the left or right by adding shims on one side and taking away the same amount on the other side until the backlash is back to where you started. The shims could be ordered from Nissan, or you could take a trip to your local gear shop and see if they have anything close that would work.

Pattern won't change substantially because the pinion depth isn't changing. Setting pinion depth is hard to do. Everything else in a diff is pretty easy. This means that installing your LSD is easy.

Here is a link to a .pdf with a lot more info about other procedures involved in differential repairs. It shows pictures of measuring backlash, and has generic instructions for all of the gear installation procedures (pinion depth, pinion bearing preload, backlash, carrier bearing preload).
http://www.ringpinio...llation_Kit.pdf

I use SWEPCO 201 in my LSD, but before I found out about it I was running your typical auto parts store lube and an LSD additive. Additives are all the same, regardless of whether they're called "Friction Modifier" or "LSD Additive" or whether they say they're for Ford, GM, or Chrysler. VLSD's should require regular gear oil, but will require a different type of fluid inside the LSD, but that LSD works on an entirely different system and the VLSD fluid wouldn't be what you'd want to add to your CLSD gear oil.

3-12-2007

It was actually only 3 shims. I think the right side had one thick one, and the left side had one thin and one thick. I was reading the FSM and they said that the shims were available. I haven't tried to order them, but they were at least at one point available. It's just a placeholder, so a closely sized shim from a GM or Ford should be fine too.