Thread: ARB Locker

A while ago I bought a s/h ARB Locker.....Recently after a a bit of saving I also bought some Hy-Tuff axles to go with it. The diff is in very good condition, the previous owner said that the vehicle had done less than 4000k's since the install, so after having a peek inside was chuffed to find everything in such good order. So why the o/haul? Well everything can be better and I like tinkering.
I will attempt to explain the pics as they come:
So this post is for those who may be interested in my front diff o/haul, locker upgrade.
Once the axles arrived I thought a start was in order, so first off I stripped the centre down to it's bare parts. (the centre is a 24 spline disco unit)









Most of the bits are in the previous pictures, some may be missing as the idea of posting this hadn't really been thought through.
So far I have pulled it all apart and cleaned everything up. Next was to reshim the the side gears (the ones that drive the axles) this is because the standard ARB shimming is a little on the loose side. The idea is to have the pinions and side gears with as little play as possible.



The original shim is .030" and is seen in the upper left of pic, what it was replaced with was a .068" thick shim from a Hilux after it was determined that an extra .016" was needed. (achieved through a trial fitting with a stack of setting shims) To make the new shim fit .022" had to be machined from the Lockers 'hat', so .020" was duly machined off.



Then that side was assembled so the other side could have the same treatment.







Preceding picture shows both ends machined, sadly I didn't take all the pics I should have so some steps are missing, I'll try to fix that later. The shim on the flange side was also .030" . In order to make future servicing foolproof it is important to have both shims the same size so that reassembly does not require measuring and sorting from side to side. So to make the .068" shim fit slightly more material was removed from the Flange cap, somewhere around .024" which is a bees whatsit larger than half a millimetre.
When reassembled the gear set now has a nice firmish feel when turned by hand not free and sloppy as it used to be.

The following pictures show some more assembly and details of the locker cage, (black plastic thingy) up to this point the locker has been assembled without the cage and locking ring.





Thats all I have now, the post is probably a bit long so part 2 will be later this week.
Cheers
Wayne

Wayne - according to a friendly ARB engineer, you need to make sure you leave 0.006" play/backlash in there to allow for thermal expansion and oiling.