JonB wrote:Great, it's looking good.
I've inspected the doughnuts and they have surface cracks, very small, plus some evidence of stretching round the bolt holes. I have some good used replacements, I will probably fit them for now. My diff has the strengthening plate fitted across the ears. (looks like a simple bit of angle iron... really, Colin? Was that the best you could come up with?).
Hi Jon,
My do-nuts had signs of surface cracks & stretching within a few hundred miles, they still look the same some 40,000 miles later, so I wouldn't worry too much about that, but ANY sign of de-lamination between the rubber & steel plates & I would be changing them asap.
As to what to change them for........
All variants seem to have their supporters & their detractors & there's probably no right or wrong here, just differing opinion.
The original do-nuts were fine for road use, I can testify to that with first hand experience, & do give some cushioning effect to the drive train components, but the quality of modern replacements can be questionable. I can also testify to that with first hand experience of my friends S3.
Various CV conversions have been around for a lot of years now, & I think it's been proved they don't cause any more drive train component failures than had been the case with do-nuts. If you have a weakened component, the CV may find it sooner, but that's about it. My own S4 Elan has Sue Miller CV's, the PO fitted them in about 2004, did thousands of miles on them, & had no problems, even without any suspension drop restriction, which, of course, isn't an issue on a +2. However, when under the car adjusting the handbrake for MOT earlier this year, I noticed an outward dent in the tin retainer for the boot. On closer inspection, I found it had been caused by a ball that had escaped from the joint & was just rattling around in there loose. I have no idea how it got out, or how long it had been loose, but other than the dent, there was no other damage. I cleaned everything up, re-installed the ball in it's correct location, re-greased & reassembled it all & it's been fine since. I hadn't noticed anything in the way the car behaved, nor any out of the ordinary noises, so think I was lucky to notice it by accident before the ball managed to do some real damage. I shall be keeping a much closer eye on things in that department from now on, so perhaps not the 'fit & forget' that we are led to believe.
UJ's & sliding splines have again been around for years, even longer than CV's. Plenty of other marques have used them with no real problems & Lotus themselves used them on the 26R's. It's important to keep the sliding splines well lubricated & the UJ's well greased, but I know several people who have used them for years & prefer their simplicity over CV's.
And yes, the diff brace is basically a piece of angle iron, but it seems to have worked for it's intended purpose. For Colin, i suspect keeping it simple kept it cheap, & he would have liked that
Regards, Tim