The earlier replaceable u-joints are weaker. Go with the later size and have replaceable ones installed.

 

Ive been setting up rearends for a while now,and our style is by far the easiest.Regardless,you cannot afford to guess or fudge anything,its still a VERY precise proceedure,but our specific style 3rd member has an very adjustable friendly setup compared to most.
The carrier adjusters make backlash a cakewalk and the pinion depth shims are usually close when you reuse the old one from a given case.But dont count on it being dead on if you change the ring and pinion.The shims are cheap though...The pinion crush sleeve is also nice,since it eliminates another shim stack and a bunch of teardown time getting the pinion preload right.

Whatever you do,if your gonna do a rearend setup,get to the Chevy dealer and buy a small tube of REAL gear marking compound.Its the ONLY way to go,forget prussian blue,forget white grease...this stuff makes pattern reading super easy and its only a few bucks.The tube will last you a liftime and its very,very high pigment,mustard yellow so theres no doubt.You also must have dial indicator on a magnetic stand,theres just no getting around that one,expect about 40-60 bucks for that one.
Everything else is just handtools.No voodoo or special,crazy tools....although a bearing press can make it nice for installing new bearings.

 

Would you be so kind as to do a writeup or perhaps a quick rundown of the general procedure?

How do you determine which spacer shim you need? There's several of different thicknesses available.

 

Would it be feasable to use the Miata torson only in a 1979 rear axle? I. E. keep the original ring and pinyon but replace the open differential with the Torson?

 

'84-up housings only.

 

Audi didn't have a problem putting TorSens in their turbo'd Quattro Coupes of the 80s. Won quite a few hillclimb races (such as Pike's Peak) with it, in fact!

 

78-83 small axles
84-85 big axles
78-82 large pinnion flange
83-85 small pinion flange

 

They were also all wheel drive and only used the biasing diff in the center, IIRC.

Either way, difficult to get one wheel spin when it has to spin 4x instead of 2x. AWD is much easier on differentials than 2WD in loose conditions.

AWD is weird, anyway. They use viscous-clutch diffs to good effect, too!

 

Too bad their quattro tech was banned after a string of wins...

 

Nah. Audi was just outclassed. They were trying to make huge power in order to overcome the huge aerodynamic aids they needed to keep the car stable with an 85" or so wheelbase that they homologated back when the cars were a lot slower...

AWD was never made illegal, they just took away the big aerodynamics, carpet fiber materials, and 500+hp engines. And the end result today is cars with half the power and more weight running faster stage times than the Group B era.

 

Audi Quattro tech was banned from a number of races including everything from SCCA Trans-Am series (1988) to TOCA (1997) - in all cases Audi was racking up wins, then saw their quattro banned for "unfair advantage." Australia is now the only country in the world where Audi quattros are still permitted to race in the super touring car series. Elsewhere, quattro has been banned as it is considered to be an 'unfair advantage' over competitors, despite the extra weight carried by the vehicles.

and back on-topic, Audi was sending 500hp through the TorSen in both off-road rallying and touring car race conditions. As Peejay said it was in AWD application, but impressive nonetheless.

 

I thought the 83-85 had the larger pinion flange?

 

X2 some pictures would be good too, im good with the spanner but never set up backlash etc

 

http://gearinstalls.com/

ZUK rocks.