Differential Mileage

[impalaplt]

So, when shopping the "USED" Junkyard market, how many miles is too many miles for a used differential?

I know that most of these are well maintained, never abused, only driven to church on Sunday units.....

HA HA HA HA.....

Just looking for thoughts......

And, if I were to buy a higher mileage unit, what should I look at it/do to it???

They are getting harder to find out there.....Finite supply, and they are getting picked over.....

Thanks

[elc32955]

If you're hard up you might try giving Chris Henry a call at CHenry Motorsports. He's done a number of diff swapouts on G8, Caprice, and SS cars, most of the time the original owners did not want or take their old original diff's back (myself included), sorta kicking myself in the keyster now for letting my 2.92 LSD there at just over 12K miles on the unit. Check with him to see what's lurking under his bench, you might be surprised...

Good luck
Eric

[GammaFlat]

I've got a 2.92 with ~56K miles. I'm in NW Indiana. Shipping might be prohibitive. I would take 100 plus the ride.

[impalaplt]

I guess I should have clarified.....

I'm looking for a CAMARO 3.27 or 3.45 LSD unit.....

I have a just fine 2.92 OEM diff that's screaming to be upgraded....

I DID find a complete SS rear cradle with the 3.27, but as I understand it, it's the smaller/same size as the PPV.

[elc32955]

Go with 3.45 without a doubt or it's really not worth messing with IMHO. You might try making an account on Camaro5 to check with those guys as I'm sure there's still low mile LSD diff's to be had in the wild... for a price. 2010-2015 are your target years.

We really haven't had much discussion on reconditioning of high-miler diff's here, although I'm sure there is a procedure you could follow before you mount one up. As an alternative, how about a gear change on what you have worst come to worst? Although the Camaro 3.45 is a beefier diff if you look at my side by side comparison photos....

Eric

[bstoner]

This is hard to say. So many factors will go into when the friction material will wear out and it becomes an open diff. On the bench you could try to hold and rotate by hand but that won't tell you much unless it is completely shot. Of course I would drain and refill and put new axles seals in while at it. The most common issue besides worn out clutches is over time the left bearing clearance opens up. JRE has a set of bearing caps where you measure the housing then mill the new caps to fix. Its not really a huge problem unless you are running big power. With all that being said if you are going for low budget I would get a used 3.27 and put new oil and axle seals in. Easy to do. If you want more acceleration then go 3.45 instead of 3.27. The 3.45 were only in the manual SS so a little harder to find and comand a higher price premium. If you are going to build the car then I would go 3.45 for NA, 3.27 for FI, new JRE caps, new diff cover, and an Eaton Truetrac diff. You could always buy new gears but I think most save money and go for the larger Camaro diffs with their ratios. Stronger diff and cheaper.