by Paul Kirk » Sun Dec 09, 2012 1:56 am
Rod, further to your great photos of the Stanton Corvette I thought it might be apropriate to ad a little snippet of info. re the diff.
Morry and Charlie had problems wearing out the teeth on the crown wheel and pinions in the early days of developement, so they fitted a Cadilac cw&p which was beefier, this required the carrier flange the cw bolted to, to be further to the side, (the cw being thicker), this they made themselves and incidently, it still had the differential gears in it, i.e. it wasnt just a spool. Still seeing evidence of flex that was effecting the mesh of the gears they made an adjustable rubbing block that rubbed on the back of the cw opposite the pinion so as to reduce the distance the cw flexed away from the pinion on accelleration, also when setting up the mesh, instead of giving the gears backlash as we normally do, they set them up with no backlash!
I imagine what is inside that old V8 diff housing these days is probably more modern and probably incorperates a limited slip as well!
I should mention that Morry and Charlie incorporated a device that enabled them to lock the two rear axles together, or to uncouple them so they had the normal differential effect. Everyone will have seen the diff housing at the back with the chains going forward to sprockets driving the axles, well the inner ends of those axles were splined, and there was/is an internally splined tube/sleeve that could be slid over both axles thereby making them solid, they often used that configuration for shingle hillclimbs, they could then slide the sleeve sideways so it de-coupled the axels if required!
Morry and Charlie had a great affinity with chains, as is bourne out by their chain drive steering system, but that's another story!
PK.
Rod, further to your great photos of the Stanton Corvette I thought it might be apropriate to ad a little snippet of info. re the diff.
Morry and Charlie had problems wearing out the teeth on the crown wheel and pinions in the early days of developement, so they fitted a Cadilac cw&p which was beefier, this required the carrier flange the cw bolted to, to be further to the side, (the cw being thicker), this they made themselves and incidently, it still had the differential gears in it, i.e. it wasnt just a spool. Still seeing evidence of flex that was effecting the mesh of the gears they made an adjustable rubbing block that rubbed on the back of the cw opposite the pinion so as to reduce the distance the cw flexed away from the pinion on accelleration, also when setting up the mesh, instead of giving the gears backlash as we normally do, they set them up with no backlash!
I imagine what is inside that old V8 diff housing these days is probably more modern and probably incorperates a limited slip as well!
I should mention that Morry and Charlie incorporated a device that enabled them to lock the two rear axles together, or to uncouple them so they had the normal differential effect. Everyone will have seen the diff housing at the back with the chains going forward to sprockets driving the axles, well the inner ends of those axles were splined, and there was/is an internally splined tube/sleeve that could be slid over both axles thereby making them solid, they often used that configuration for shingle hillclimbs, they could then slide the sleeve sideways so it de-coupled the axels if required!
Morry and Charlie had a great affinity with chains, as is bourne out by their chain drive steering system, but that's another story!
PK.