Thread: Diff Lock in or out on dirt

I usually put it in, makes the car more controllable, especially in loose dirt.

Baz.

The boys that know here in Melbourne told me to always engage CDL off the blacktop.

I leave mine out, unless I am in a traction loss situation off road.

I find with it locked on high speed dirt, the handling tends towards understeer. I prefer a "looser" more oversteery feeling, hence leaving it unlocked.

Originally Posted by BigJon

I leave mine out, unless I am in a traction loss situation off road.

I find with it locked on high speed dirt, the handling tends towards understeer. I prefer a "looser" more oversteery feeling, hence leaving it unlocked.

I find the opposite.

I put mine in pretty much as soon as things get a little loose.

On shinny dirt roads you can have just as much traction as tar so unless it's wet or loose I dont enguage it.

It drives a hell of a lot better with it in I find, much more predictable.

i was always an outy, bourne fro my days in part time 4wds, but when suggested by a mate whose opinion i trusted to lock it up, i tried it and found it was a heap more controllable.
i doubt the wear thing would have much creedance. it might be something that has come from jeep circles, they have a similar set up in the quadratrac transfer cases but where ours are open when unlocked, theirs are limited slip and do wear out.
i found this out from owning a renegade that some knob had blown the front diff in, and replaced it with one that was a different ratio, something had to give and it was the transfer case.

Don't they 'wind up' in the case if there's not enough loss of traction? I've heard stories of people having to back up a long way before they were able to disengage.

WRT to wear, as I understood it from the US, the LT230 is really poorly lubricated within the cross gears in the centre diff, and it is these that wear badly if the CDL isn't locked. I have seen pictures of these blued. I don't know how this applies to the LT95 but John Lee and Ho Chung were adamant that the CDL should be locked as soon as you hit dirt.

Personally..... with my setup CDL is locked when I go into low range.

Originally Posted by omvanders

Don't they 'wind up' in the case if there's not enough loss of traction? I've heard stories of people having to back up a long way before they were able to disengage.

Yes, but they are designed to cope with that. Wind up has to occur whenever you lock the CDL. The box is pretty strong so I wouldn't worry about it breaking.

There is only so much windup a box can have, so its more a question of the wind up pressure rather than it winding up like the spring in a wind up toy. If its not unlocking then drive turning the wheel left to right etc, or put the handbrake on and apply drive pressure against it in either direction. These techniques will release the pressure from the locking mechanism to unlock it.