Lsd!

obama'swhiteson

New Member
hey guys, looking to get an LSD, i like the obx lsd, ive read about it and its a basically a clone of the quaife. also have seen a mfactory brand lsd wich seems to me to be in the middle of the two. whats your guys opinions on these brands i think i have my mind set on an obx but doesnt hurt to hear what you guys have to say. also has anyone installed an lsd, how much of a difference is it? is it worth it?
thanks,
johnny
 

dekaf

pǝʇuɐɹb ɹoɟ buıɥʇou ǝʞɐʇ
I would just get a Qualife LSD or swap out your tranny with an ITR.
The internals of the OBX and the Qualife are pretty much identical, and the down side of the OBX LSD is that it doesn't come with lifetime warranty.
 
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dekaf

pǝʇuɐɹb ɹoɟ buıɥʇou ǝʞɐʇ
It has been stated in the past that the OBX diff is a direct copy of the Quaife differential. OBX is a company that has a reputation of producing cheap chinese knockoffs of quality parts. I purchased an OBX diff for an R200 off of ebay (brand new) for $375, and I also purchased a brand new Quaife for an R200. Retail on the Quaife is $1495.00. I have a connection that saved me about $300. The only similarity I found was the design and the theory of operation. The parts are all pretty different, which leads me to believe that OBX actually employed some of the own engineering into this one.

When the OBX arrived, I noticed what appeared to be a missing bolt, and I also noticed that out of the 11 remaining bolts, 9 of them were marked 8.8 strength and the other 2 were not marked, and had noticably smaller heads. After disassembly, I found that the 2 odd bolts, aside from having smaller heads and no spec markings, were also too short. The appearance of the unit was acceptable...



until I opened the box containing the quaife and saw this...



I now understand why the Quaife costs 4 times as much as the OBX. I was hesitant to open up the Quaife, because they don't break and the warranty card says I shouldn't, but I decided to because there hasn't been a picture thread comparing the 2 side by side.

The first difference, obviously, is the appearance and finish quality of the assembly. The quaife looks like a diamond, while the OBX looks like a rock. The OBX only has Ten 12mm holes to mount the ring gear, so if you are using an early ring gear, you will need to make spacers to take up the extra room around the bolt. Some say this isn't necessary, but I don't think its a bad idea. The Quaife has 20 holes in the ring gear flange....so that you can use either the 10mm or 12mm ring gears. This was a nice touch.

The quaife uses 12 12.9 strength M10 bolts to hold the case together, while the OBX uses 9 8.8 strenght and 2 unknown quality M8 bolts to hold the case together.

The OBX bolts are on the left, the Quaife bolts are on the right.



The OBX uses a 2 piece case, with all 11 bolts from one side, while the Quaife uses a 3 piece case, consisting of basically 2 end caps and a solid center section, and uses 6 bolts to hold each cap onto the center section.

OBX is on the left, Quaife is on the right...with only the bolts and part of the case removed. The flash didn't work, so I'll try to get a better pic later.



Here is a shot of the pieces removed to take the previous picture, again, OBX is on the left, quaife is on the right.



Here are the sidegears from each diff. The OBX uses a gear that simply floats inside in the housing....only centered by the loose fitting axle. The quaife sidegear has a pilot which locates it in the housing. The OBX has longer teeth than the Quaife sidegear. OBX is on the left, Quaife is on the right.




Both units each use 12 helical gears....6 for each side, but they are a little different. The OBX helicals have almost 1/4 inch of chamfer on the edges of the gear teeth, while the Quaife has substantially less chamfer. Less chamfer means more surface area able to generate friction against the case. the Quaife also uses larger diameter gears, that have some sort of surface treatment. OBX is on the left, Quaife is on the right




Now for the washer stack. The Quaife uses 6 washers, stacked )()()(, while the OBX came with 8 washers stacked ((()())). The washers retainers on the Quaife are considerably larger in diameter and very slightly longer than the OBX retainers. See my other thread for my problems with the OBX washers.

Quaife washer stack

OBX and Quaife washer retainers


While the OBX uses a separate spacer to house the the washer retainers and washers:



The Quaife incorporates this into the case center section, so there is no spacer to float around:



Thats if for the pics....camara batteries went dead.

The Quaife has very finely ground mating surfaces, almost polished, everywhere....there is not a dirty cut or coarse finish anywhere on it. It appears that every component has been though a vibratory deburring process, and then polished...amazingly well. The Quaife came coated in the thick anti corrosive oil, which wiped off easily with a rag and solvent.

The OBX diff has only finish machined surfaces, which on cast iron tend to be very porous...and arrived with what appeared to be residual cutting oil soaked into the pores. When you try to wipe it off, your rag gets caught up in the rough surface. No post machining deburring or polishing was done to the case of the OBX. The gears look to have been deburred, but not polished.

I think that the OBX diff would be fine for lower TQ applications if some things were replaced on it. First off, the washers need to be replaced. I think the best solution for the washer issue would be to make a spacer for the middle and use only 2 bellville washers, one on each side. Second, the case bolts need to be replaced with something of a higher grade. The OBX bolts are M8 x 1.25 x 60mm, available from McMaster car in 12.9 strength. I have a theory that the reason that my washers were destroyed in the OBX was because the case bolts were weak and stretched, allowing exessive clearance in the washer pack under accel and then impacting them on decel. I don't have the brains to prove this yet, but I'm working on it. Another possible flaw I see in the OBX is the oil holes. The Quaife has more holes for gear oil to enter the assembly, and the holes in the Quaife are much larger than the OBX oil holes. When I reasemble the OBX, I'll be adding a few more oil holes in non-critical spots in the case.

The Quaife's M10 x 30 bolts are much less prone to stretch, and therefore the quaife is a much more ridgid unit that can handle more TQ.

I hope this is of some use to somebody....

Source: http://forums.hybridz.org/index.php/topic/57834-obx-vs-quaife-with-pixors/
 

dekaf

pǝʇuɐɹb ɹoɟ buıɥʇou ǝʞɐʇ
I don't even know why I contributed to this thread, all you had to do is a little bit of searching. Shit people are lazy as fuck, even on the fucking computer.
 


DaddyBuiltRacing

Resident Asshole
OBX=Junk parts made by shoeless workers on dirt floors

I have an MFactory LSD in my trans and absolutely love it. The quaife is nice, but they are way over priced.
 

endo617

Rattle Can Technician
I heard a lot of times the axles get jammed in the OBX lsd and are ridiculously hard to pull out, in more than one claim
 

redrocket

New Member
I have a Quaife and have not had any trouble with it. I think the parts store on this site has it at a great price!
 
To sum up all that was said in one cliche that we use all the time around here...You get what you pay for.
Just find yourself a trans that came from Honda with LSD. Honda LSD's are better than OBX by far.
 
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