Thread: Getting that maxi drive out of one housing and into another

Hi all, at long last the vibration problems that I have been experiencing ever since I fitted the maxi drive to my series 3 stage 1, are sorted! The whole problem was as a result of using a series 2 diff housing on the car resulting in incorrect drive line geometry.

The Solution... putting the old diff housing back into the car! Anyway to to this required fitting an actuator block onto the other housing. I wouldn't have been able to do this without the help of chris (rangiemad), his mate rossko and fred smith for selling me a maxidrive block and letting me borrow the jig! We took a few photos of everything we did for the sake of sharing it with you guys.

Here are the photos:

Preparing the diff housing to use the jig. All contact faces must be clean so the jig sits in the right place.


Grinding of the weld seam that was preventing the block from sitting in the right spot.




The jig and block sitting in the right position.




The scribed hole that is required to be cut. A sharpened screw driver works surprisingly well for this!


Just a quick lesson we learnt some time down the track... mark/cut the hole larger then necessary to ensure that the actuator arm will fit through!!!

Drill holes in the corners.


And cut as deep as you can with an angle grinder.


Once you have gone as deep as you can, use a jigsaw to cut the remaining material.

The hole.


And how it all sits together.


Welding, if you do it slowly enough and doing the corners evenly you can get away with not having to pre-stress the housing.










While we were waiting for it to cool, we fitted some crown wheel protection.






Removal of the old housing.















Fit the original housing back in.




Just a shot of the diff... this is the diff I had to tinker with to make it fit... 2mm off the maxi drive flange and 2mm off the back of the crown wheel.


And start to bolt it all back together!




Took the most part of a day, but it solved the vibration problems... Problems that not even 10degree caster wedges couldn't fix!

When we did my old one we used a hole saw(went through really easy)and then a die grinder to make the sqaure shape so the actuator would fit through.(Just another way if someone is tackling the same job)Regards Brett