I completed a task for the front end of our racer! There's been a lot of movement on many of the almost two dozen tasks on that list, but none has been finished until now. I cleaned the grease from the lawnmower differential. I know, it doesn't sound like much. Until you see the difference.
I applied most of a can of Easy Off, attached a hose to the washing machine's hot water, and used a pressure washer attachment with the hose. I let it sit for 20 minutes then hosed it down with hot water. Then I did it again. It cleaned up rather nicely.
Generally speaking, a differential is what keeps driven wheels on the same axle from skidding sideways when a vehicle turns. The outside wheel has to travel farther than the inside wheel to keep the vehicle in the turn. If the drive wheels spun at the same rate, the vehicle would tend to twist and skid away from the turn and make vehicle handling problematic. To avoid that skidding, the wheel on the outside of the turn has to turn slightly faster than the wheel on the inside of the turn.
The entire differential spins, but the shafts turn independently of the gear attached to the main housing (the ring gear). The shafts are also coupled to each other using bevel gears. So, if you hold the housing and spin one of the shafts, the other shaft spins in the opposite direction.
In practice, if one shaft starts spinning faster than the differential (the outside tire during a turn) then the other wheel will automagically slow down the same amount to compensate and keep the vehicle from skidding. Now that I know all this, I look at my Subaru Impreza with new wonder.
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