Another Diff question

[ponyexpress]

According to the numbers on my truck it says I have a 3.00 open rear. I think this may have been changed. How do I tell if I have a traction lock or open rear end without opening up the rear. If I spin one wheel with the rear in the air and the other wheel turns in the same direction is this a traction lock rear?

[tnlprt]

nope you have to open it up to be 100% sure

You can take the 5 bolts out of the pinion retainer and pull the pinion out and check to see which carrier you have
with out pulling the whole rear end apart

This method does not require any special tools to re install the pinion and does not change any adjustments in the rear end

You can also check the ratio by this method

[ultraranger]

There are hunting gears and there are non-hunting gears. If the gear set is non-hunting, then this means the ring & pinion gears were lapped in a particular pattern --in other words, they are timed so that the same teeth come in contact with each other, --if non-hunting. If they are hunting, then the teeth randomly come in contact with each other and aren't timed.

With a 3.00:1 gear set, it's probably a timed set. If you remove the input driving pinion, it's very important to get the tooth of the driving pinion back in between the same two teeth of the two ring gear teeth that it came out from between.

In the bumpside trucks, there were two different locking differentials used. Through 1968, the stock factory locking differential would have been the Ford Limited-Slip. Beginning in 1969, Ford changed to the much improved Traction-Lok differential.

If somone swapped out the open (single track) differential for a stock Ford locking differential, it could be either a Limited-Slip differential or the much better Traction-Lok differential. ...then again, if someone has messed with it, it could be an aftermarket differential, spool, mini-spool or a Detroit Locker. If it's a case of the latter three, none of these are very street friendly.

It's a little more involved to take the wheels and drums off, pull the axles and then remove the 3rd member from the housing but, doing so will allow you to completely check out the condition of the 3rd member, gears and to see what the differential is. It will also allow you to see inside the housing for any small metallic particles that might be in the sump of the housing. Having the 3rd member out will make it much easier to clean out the inside of the housing to remove any sludge or contaminants that can damage gears and bearings.

This would also be a good time to replace axle seals, axle bearings and the 3rd member-to-housing gasket --especially if these things have not been changed in a long time.

A single track Ford differential (or Detroit Locker) would require a 3/4" boxed end wrench or socket to remove the ring gear bolts. The only thing that will fit on the ring gear bolt heads of a Ford Limited-Slip or Ford Traction-Lok differential is a 5/8" socket. The bolt heads on these two differentials is partially shrouded by the casting of the differential case so you cannot get a boxed end wrench on them.

You would probably not need to remove the ring gear from the differential. I'm just giving the bolt head/wrench sizes
required to help indentify what the differential might be.

[tnlprt]

After 40 plus years I really dont think it matters if they are a hunting or non hunting gear set

at least they didnt matter in the ones I tore down and put on Detroit lockers or changed from 28 to 31 spline or vice versa depending on what the customer wanted

Check out this little tid bit of info

http://www.kevinstang.com/Ninecase.htm

[tbone6]

O you could just do a burn out and see if you leave two black stripes or one...