Thanks to bbundy's link, picked this up from a junkyard in Lakeland for $120, out of an '82 626.



The pinion gear appears to be in good shape, with reasonable wear:



The ring gear has some surface rust on it. Not sure how severe it is yet. Need to pick up some buffing wheels for the dremel this afternoon:



If it turns out to be non-salvegable, I guess we'll just grab another one. At these prices, I'm not complaining.

The toothcount matches what solomiata says it should be (40/11) and while I don't have a Miata diff to test-fit it with, the dimensions of the ring gear seem correct: 7.125" OD, 4.25" ID.

If anybody needs the differential mechanism itself (it's an open diff, obviously), it's yours for the cost of shipping.


Came across another interesting piece of wildlife in my garage while tearing it down. Any amateur arachnologists around? I'd like to know if this little guy is anything I should be worried about. I'm not a huge fan of spiders in general, but when they've got more hair on their chest than Hustler, I'm about two steps away from standing on a chair and screaming like a little girl.

 

Lucky duck. I guess I should be keeping my eye out for these.

 

Looks like a wolf spider. They get much bigger. They are non-poisonous, though I have heard that if a big one bites you it still hurts b/c their mandables are so strong.

 

I spent a short stint doing some gear engineering several years ago. The rust on the ring gear makes me nervous since there will be some pitting there once the rust is removed. That will screw up the surface finish and the mate quality. The pinion looks pretty good though.

But, that being said, why not give it a try? Clean of the rust, and run it. Worst case you blow it up and get another. That is unless you are going to couple it with a nice Torsen that could get damaged if/when the R&P fails. Maybe try it for awhile with the cheap open diff, and then swap it over to the permanent diff when all looks good.

 

Well, yeah, I was planning to mate it to a nice Torsen.

OTOH, I do have this open diff just sitting here on the bench. I suppose that as long as the axle splines match there's no reason I can't put it into the Miata housing and run it as a test.

We'll see how this ring gear looks cleaned up. If it's bad, I might just buy another to save the hassle.

 

cant u send this to travisR and have him make replicas or soemthing?

 

What would be the point of that? You can still get them new.

 

How is someone that studies fish going to identify your spider?

 

Ok, I'm a retard.

Fixed.

 

Wolf Spider. They get pretty big. They tend to go inside when it rains a lot. I just killed one the other day in my living room.

It isn't a Brown Recluse. Those are about the size of a quarter.

I hate spiders. Those little bastards scare me. I never know which ones are aggressive and poisonous or docile. So I kill them all.

 

The rust is fine Joe. Clean it off so you can accuretly set back lash, but even if it leaves pits, they only act as oil pockets to help lubricate the gears more. It happens with our gears if a chip flys up amd gets dragged trough the tooth again with the cutter. Bevel gears, and especially spiral bevel gears require very special machines to cut and a lot of experience to do right. Add on the hardening, mill, lathe, and grind operations and I'll doubt you'll be happy with any price a vendor on the board here would come up with.

 

ok, nvm then

 

Joe P.

I knew someone here would appreciate the list I found. Haters in that thread bashing 3.6's and used units suprised me.

My $85 (shipped!) unit arrived this morning. Just opened it up after seeing this thread. Everything is well oiled and not a spot of rust anywhere. Teeth all look pretty much perfect. Hardly any visible wear on either part.

I looked for used ones for a long time, couldn't find anything. Found the right used part website and there are a bunch of them out there. I hope more can benefit too.

Junkyards with 3.63 r&ps.

 

friend how knows spiders says it doesn't look like a wolf spider from the pic.....thinks it might be a trap door spider...

 

The thing that kills me is that I've known about car-part.com for years, have bought stuff through then, and have even tried using them to locate 3.636 diffs. Every time I searched for a '79-'82 626 differential, I came up with zero hits. Never occurred to me to search for a "Carrier", even though it says I should right on the search page.

WTF is a "carrier" anyway? I don't want to project force over a great distance by achieving air superiority, I just want to independantly couple the drive axles to the damn propshaft while achieving a fixed torque multiplication ratio. That's what a differential is for!

 

searching carrier is how i scored my $250 torsen.

 

Funny thing is that I scored a Torsen for exactly the same price, by searching Differential. Called a couple of places and started out by asking unrelated questions about the car (color, various options, etc) until I found one that was described as a "maroon colored '95" with a M/T. Maroon '95 = M-edition, and with M/T = Torsen.

 

I love how all of your project threads include a critter quiz. lol. Remember the crawfish last time?

 

funny I'm picking up mine for 250 as well local junk yard FTW

 

I've found plenty of 87-88 rx7 clutch lsds this way for $75-150 as well