Sheared diff. pin

[rjjr]

I was wondering if anybody out there has actually sheared a differential pin on their own car, or has had a personal expierience with someone elses SHO. I always hear talk of this or people being weary of lighting up the tires on their SHOs in fear of this happening. Is it a common, or rare, or more of an urban legend..lol. :burn_out:

 

[AutoSHO]

It won't happen to every SHO MTX but beating on the transmission is a great way to cause the diff pin to fail. It will fail eventually in any car where you are spinning the wheels at different rates of speed for long periods of time due to a lack of lubrication in the differential. If you want to test it, go out and do some one-wheel wonders, it won't take too long.

 

[revhardSHO]

I was wondering if anybody out there has actually sheared a differential pin on their own car, or has had a personal expierience with someone elses SHO. I always hear talk of this or people being weary of lighting up the tires on their SHOs in fear of this happening. Is it a common, or rare, or more of an urban legend..lol. :burn_out:

It is a real problem to be aware of. It has happened to may people here over the years and its not uncommon. With enough time and abuse the stock diff will fail. That being said, I personally have never had diff problems on any of my SHOs. The black 89 saw many many burnouts before I became aware of the problem. Now I simply do not do burnouts. They put stress on the whole driveline, not just the diff. You can still drive a SHO hard without roasting the tires. :burn_out:

 

[SHO92]

I've had it happen twice. The first time, the pin ejected completely through the diff. The second time, I saw that the tranny was leaking. When I jacked it up to investigate, there was a small crack in the case. The pin was slowly carving out the inside of the tranny and probably would have failed completely with in a short period of time. I was about to leave on a 1,000 mile trip, so I changed my plans and bought a quaife. I'll post a pic of the trans case later if anyone is curious. Both times this happened was on a trans that I didn't know the history on. I never did extensive burnouts for fear of this happening, but I have no idea what the previous owners did with the cars.

 

[Mr Anonymous]

It's not the diff. pins that shear, it's the itsy bitsy roll pins that are supposed to retain them that shear. While I've never blown one, I know enough people who have to consider it a common ocurrance on cars that are driven hard regulary, especially those that have had their share of burnouts.

 

[SHO92]

I posted pics of what my case looked like when the diff went. Its in the open forum.
http://www.shoforum.com/showthread.php?p=243873#post243873

 

[masho95]

My diff exploded in my old 89 SHO, and the main differential pinion was starting to get eaten up in my current 95 tranny before I installed my Quaife. No pictures of the old 89, but here is a picture of my main differential pin from the 95. The spider gears were tearing it up pretty nicely. Actually enough metal got in between some of the gears and broke some teeth off.

 

[revhardSHO]

I really need to save for a quaife!

 

[rjjr]

thanks for the pictures and information guys. I'm not one to beat on my SHO, i just got to thinking about the differential when i see pictures on the internet of people doing those smokey burnouts. Makes me wonder about the past two owners of my car :jpshakeh:

 

[SHOman24v]

Cant you just increase the diameter of the holes in the diff or add some more holes to it to allow fluid to run through it, i mean the problem for each diff is having is lack of lubrication... so why not drill the holes bigger to push more fluid in and out......