Tuesday, Jan 29, 2008 at 09:26
My 2 cents
I been thinking and hesitating what to put into mine for quite a while and done quite extensive research. This is my thought.
Neither lock instantaneously. Both need some diff movement (i.e. rotating one wheel against other) to lock. Fastest way to do it to make some turning or wheel spin. However ARB has more teeth and thus locks faster because require much less movement to do it (in fact much faster). Also neither unlock under load. Again easiest way to make light turn left and right.
Both strong enough to do job. Biggest disadvantage of ARB is pneumatic actuation and everything what associated with it. Possible air leak, compressor failure and line puncture. But more then anything else is wearing o-ring and getting oil into air line and only known remedy is to disassemble and replace o-ring. Huge advantage of factory ones over ARB is fact that factory lockers show you on dashboard when they actually locked (and unlocked) while there is no way (except of feeling) to figure out if ARB locked. When you flick switch it only means that air let into diff and does not nesesarily means that they locked.
Biggest disadvantage of factory lockers is fact that there is no “see through” whole in diff. That means if you happened to break axle in “inconvenient”
spot, then you have to cut diff housing to disassemble it. It is relatively rare event, but known to happens. Also factories incredibly difficult to retrofit (talking here about 80 series, not sure about troopy). Rear diff is semi OK – one need very careful grinding application, but front is nightmare – some meat need to be add-on and new stud pattern established. Thus it came to the point when replacing whole axle is more visible. In additional factory lockers from wrecker MORE expensive then ARB and incredibly rare.
Due to these facts I did put ARB and they works admirably. But if I would buy new LC, it would be only with factory ones.
Cheers
Serg
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