Thread: ARB Front Locker Available.....soonish

Originally Posted by Graeme

The centre diff doesn't have to be partialy locked to drive both front and rear diffs equally if traction on all 4 wheels is identical.

I agree when the road surface has the same level of traction as on the bitumen but in most moderate offroad situations the level of traction is different with the rear taking most of the drive.

Garry

Originally Posted by Celtoid

If they drive mainly from the rear, why do they wear front tyres first?

Steering and braking places a greater load than normal drive. The front wheels also take a bit of the load during acceleration in an AWD vehicle.

We live in the hills, where steering and braking happen a lot. My wife worked for a government department, based locally, and they struggled to get more than 25K from the front wheels in the front drive (and underpowered) fleet when we expected to get 60K from tyres.

Interestingly, contrary to popular belief, tyre wear is accel;erated (no pun intended) when the roads are wet. Rememeber a motorcycle record attemp (how far one person can ride in 24 hours) when tyre wear increased while speed decreased when it started raining mid attempt. The tyre engineer felt it was because water is a lubricant used when cutting rubber, so it was easier for the road to slice the rubber at a quicker rate.