D3/4 driveline strength

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Originally Posted by rmp

Interestingly, the D3, the car that can tell you if so much as a brake light sensor malfunctions for a nanonsecond, has no way to let the driver know a CV joint is snapped. You may think the driver would notice, and of course you know something's wrong, but not what.

A tip, if you need to drive out with a broken CV use Rock Crawl as that prelocks the centre diff which is what you'll need to do to avoid all the drive going to the broken CV. Other modes work but RC is best. It's perhaps the only time I've wished I could lock a D3's centre diff manually.

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Rob I was under the impression that the centre diff wouldn't lock if a CV was broken - just to clarify, you're saying the CDL can be locked still and you can still have drive?

Yes. The car has no idea a CV is broken, as I'm sure if it did there'd be about 2000 warnings shown. Therefore, as far as it's concerned the front right wheel say is just very easy indeed to turn, like it's in the air. Differential theory tells us that's where all the torque would go, unless something stops it. In the case of the D3 the centre diff locks and at the front the ETC works as best it can to equalise the torque, which it's never going to be able to do. Rock Crawl helps as it preloads things more. The car (not mine, I would like to clarify) was able to drive out but not up an incline till it was put into RC. If the CDL hadn't locked we would not have been able to move the car.

In the same way if you break a CV on a car with ETC pull the ETC/ABS fuse to disable the system so the ETC doesn't work on the front axle.

Yes, you can use Rock Crawl if you break a CV. BUT ..... if you break a front CV joint (who, me?:angel:), you'll have great difficulty negotiating corners - the drive will disengage the centre diff and you coast to a halt. So the the technique required is to build up the momentum you need prior to negotiating the corner.

I had the locking rear eDiff, and it was still a pretty hairy trip home! Hills are also a drama, due to the 'hill' mode the transmission uses.

In my experience (and opinion), the D3/D4 has one of the strongest drive trains ever put into a production Landie. I've bashed the hell out of it, things that continually broke my heavily modified D1, the D3 just shrugs off!

Cheers,

Gordon