Quote:
Originally Posted by MacUser  |
I read that article before and I'm fairly certain that guy bought the wrong halfshafts. It looks like he bought e30 4cyl halfshafts. 4cyl models came with small case diffs while 6cyl's came with medium case diffs. Medium case diffs are much wider than small case diffs, therfore the halfshafts MUST be shorter in order to fit. In that article, the person stated that the e30 halfshafts were longer than the Ti halfshafts and if you look at the pic he posted, the halfshafts appear to be the same diameter. I'll tell you from my own experience as a guy who has personally went to the junkyard and purchased/pulled several diffs(I had 5 of them sitting on my garage floor at one time) as well as removed, purchased and installed a pair of e30 325is halfshafts, the 6cyl e30 halfshafts are about an inch and a half shorter than the Ti halfshafts and are about 1/4" larger in diameter than the Ti shafts.
The fact that that guy was dumb enough to install longer halfshafts that appear to be the same diameter as the Ti halfshafts and then went through the hassle of swapping the CV joints makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. The reason his e30 halfshafts wouldn't bolt to his medium case diff is because they were not made for that diff, they were made for use with a small case diff. Obviously if he would have bought the halfshafts with his medium case diff, they would've bolted up no problem. He might as well have just used the stock ti halfshafts since he didn't accomplish anything.
There's been a few people on this forum that have managed to force Ti halfshafts onto medium case diffs. As I mentioned before, the medium case diff is significantly wider than the Ti's small case diff. This is really bad. You need shorter halfshafts to compesate for the added width of the medium case diff. Forcing a pair of 318ti halfshafts onto a medium case diff puts excessive stress on the CV joints and limits the range of movement that the CV joints need to pivot when the suspension extends and compresses.
I snapped this pic when I was swapping my diff. The diff on top is an e28 medium case 3.25LSD that I eventually sold to Marv17. You can note it's an e28 diff by the rear cover that needed to be swapped in order to fit the Ti. I ended up using an e24 3.46LSD. The halshafts that are attached to that diff were pulled by myself off of an '89 325is. I later rebuilt the CV joints prior to installing them onto my '97 ti. The diff and halfshafts at the bottom of the picture is the stock 318ti diff and halfshafts. Now I understand that this pic is a little misleading because the e28 medium case diff is actually further away than the 318ti diff which makes them look the same size. I assure you the e28 diff is significantly wider, the pic is just an optical illusion. However, you can clearly see that the e30 halfshafts are much shorter than the Ti halfshafts and much thicker:
