The 1LE/ZL1 eLSD has the ring gear bolted, not welded. It is made my a different company. As you noted, it is the weld that breaks when going for <1.4sec 60' times.

Freeze your 1/4 dowel over night and then heat your .248 hole good and hot and your pin should drop and then spot weld it and interference fit is a good thing.

Great thread. Very interesting. I would def give freezing the dowel a try.

The expansion of steel is pretty consistent. 6 millionths of a inch for every inch per degree.

.002” of interference fit will require 1400 degrees of temperature change to get a .250” dowel pin in a .248” hole.

As far as interference fit goes, for shear strength, .002” fit is no stronger than .0002”. There is more axial grip (force trying to pull/push the pin in and out of the hole), but a shear force will be no stronger.

I understand that the 1LE diff is bolted, but the case is entirely different. The standard SS case is two piece, the 1LE is three piece. And the 1LE case is not split right down the center of the pinion case like the SS case. And to me, it looks like the 1LE case is possibly nodular, not ductile iron.

The article I saw said that the SS rear end suffers from the pinion gear wanting to “wedge” the case apart, hence the three piece (one piece center) of the 1LE setup.

Who is this guy?^**

I love all the technical answers.

There are a lot of answers to a lot of things in this book

http://theminimachineshop.com/Techni...20Handbook.pdf

Stange said the case has a tendency to split, I don't buy it, Strange wants to sell a solution. There is a 360 degree support for the bearing vs 2 bolts cap facing the WRONG direction for the exact same type of deflection. This snail case is heck of strong IMO. I don't see ANY difference in bearing support between the two snail cased, if anything the design of the 1le case is weaker cause both support bearings are in boltin cases. Of course the the 10.9" 1le is A LOT LOT bigger, so don't go saying I said the 8.2" case was stronger, I said if anything the design was stronger with a complete 1 piece casting for the majority of the case..kind of like an Offy engine. IMO there should be no issues sanding a dowel freezing it and pushing it into a 500 degree headed housing... trail and error.

Guy knows his shit lol, I am a toolmaker by trade and what he says is true!
you are not going to shrink a dowel 0.002" in the freezer

It seems pretty stout just looking at it. I about blew a nut carrying that diff out to the garage.

Sounds like the factory did weld it. I can understand why they did NOT do a 360 weld, as there is shrinkage problems from the hot weld and the cooler steel, maby iron, maybe cast steel of the carrier.

Maybe the dowel needs to be much wider, but only penetrate the ring a few mm. Say upto 3/8 inch, that puts a lot of surface area resisting any shear forces... i.e there is no way the ring is going to break a 3/8 down acting as keyway 4 inches away from the centerline, the torque needed to do that would bust the pinion in 1/2. I would slightly angle grind the dowels... so they would wedge in.

They did do a full 360deg weld on the outside. I don’t see any weld on the inside. Not sure what pin size would be ideal but I have 1/4” on the way. There isn’t a ton of overlap between the back of the carrier and the ring gear. The carrier has a pattern of webbing with 8 even points so I was thinking just putting one at each spot.

how thick is the webbing?

One the outside does it look a bead or is a friction weld?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol8BGOr-Q9U

I'm just surprised there is no cracking due to shrinkage on a perimeter weld... I'm glad you are looking into this. Really is starting to sound like some dowels will be the simpled solution...

dowels further out are going to be more effective even if the carrier is thinner, it just has more moment arm.

I don't think additional outside welding would bite any deeper, I would do an inside weld first after the assembly was heated to say 600 degrees.


On the 10.9' 1LE, IMO, only if somebody makes a gear based LSD and then there is no need of any e controls Call me oldschool.

Here is what I am thinking. 8 spots. Any closer in and it doesn’t catch the ring gear.