Addicted to LSD

It’s been 8 years since I’ve had my LSD. It’s definitely one of the best investments I have ever done. Looking back it should be one of the first mods to do if you’re putting together a performance car. After about 8 years of hard running on track and drift days, finally decided it was time for a rebuild. The LSD I’m using is made by Cusco. It’s the MZ model with 1 or 2 way option. Granted I was clueless at the time when I choose this one because it was different and everyone else was getting TRD or Kaaz. But getting it for a pretty sweet deal, when I was working at Signal helped too.

Tearing down the differential here’s is what we get:

Compared to the TRD (middle) discs, the Cusco (right) discs are large. So it has better lock up and dissipates heat much better. The stock LSD is way on the left and very inferior for performance applications.

Checking the clutch pack thickness, it turns out it was about .020 undersize from new. It doesn’t sound like much, but I guess that means it’s worn.

Rebuilding a few TRD differentials the past few years, I was expecting to do some work on the housing. Since TRD housings are cast and not hardened, they have a tendency to develop ridges in the keyways from abuse. Sorry don’t have any pictures to show you what I’m explaining. If not properly taken care of during a rebuild, they may hinder the function of the LSD after the rebuild.

The Cusco on the other hand is a hardened steel housing. Upon inspection of the housing I didn’t see any kind of wear on the housing nor the gear. And this is after 8 years of hard driving. And most corolla drivers know that constant clutch kicks are the norm for drifting.

The clutch pack still looks new. The new one from the rebuild kit is on the left.

What sucked was the rebuild kit I received after about 2 months of waiting, I was short 2 discs. My differential requires a total of 16 discs. I only got 14 discs. Since I didn’t want to wait for the replacement, I had to grab one the used discs to fill in the gap. So make sure you know how may you need and get the proper amount of discs. The MZ and RS use different amount of disc. The new MZ has a total of 20 discs.

I’ve also opted to use a 4.556 ring and pinion this time around for better acceleration and to hang in 3^rd gear longer. We’ll see how it turns out.

Eventually, I’ll need to get my ass in gear and upgrade to this puppy.