Re: Re: Selectable Lockers

[Anonymous]

(– by LugNutz #5331 –)

I'm not biased as to whether Electric or Air, like em both. But I will say stay away from the Eaton Elocker especially if your running a Dana 35. I have a friend that had all sorts of problems with his, he was getting bad noises from the back axle so he limped it over to my place to have a look at it. We pulled the diff cover off and found that in order to make room for the magnetic activator, they had move the engagement ring inwards. The problem with that design is it greatly reduces the spline contact surface on your passenger side axle, down to less than a quarter of of the splined section (less than a 1/2inch at the tip) of the OEM passenger axle shaft. It turns out that my buddys problem was he had managed to strip the splines smooth on the OEM axle shaft. He called Eaton and they were aware of the problem, their solution was he should be running aftermarket cromoly shafts seeing as most aftermarket suppliers generally don't taper the end of the shaft as much as the OEM ones. Now I won't say he is always easy on his rig, but still I was shocked to see how little surface mating area some designer figured was acceptable especially considering this is an axle upgrade. He had a spare set of Cromos we put in seeing as the splines on the engagement ring were not damaged, and thoroughly cleaned out the carrier and housing and sent him on his way. Talked to him the other day and he's had problems again related to the locker. I'll post up some pictures if I can find them.

Now I will add he has a TJ on 35's which is never a good combination on a Turdy Five and if I recall correctly his was a first gen Eaton, but I really have to wonder how someone could think reduced spline engagement could be a good thing. Do a Google search for Eaton Elocker problems, there are quite a few out there.