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Ital rear axle


Bananaman

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you can get a lsd for the marina axle i have one bought for a new car in 2001 its is a quaife unit and seems to work ok not tested in competition yet next year hopefully also there is a firm i think its on the south coast st leonards that do a live axle motorbike engined car and they uprate the axles i can try and trawl through the back issiues of low flying to find details of the firm.

regards hugh

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After destroying my diff at Brooklands doing 0-60s I put in a Quaiffe LSD. I think the cost was about 600UKP. IFAIR the advice at the time was now the diff was fairly bullet proof, but the half shaft would now be the weakest link (followed by the bearings). Simplistic maths would suggest that with a normal diff each half shaft will never take more than 50% of the torque (ignoring shock loads), whereas with a fully locked diff each can take virtually 100%. As yet I have had no further problems, but neither have I returned to the brooklands day.

During normal driving you wouldn't know its there. On fast 3rd corners of track days it clearly allows the inner wheel a fair degree of spin - as the revs drop a bit as car comes out of the corner.

 

Phil Stewart of Road and Race Transmission (01959 525105) is worth a call.

 

I belive that the uprating is a factory option?


 

I could be wrong, but all the factory did was strengthen the casing of the diff, to prevent the A-frame pickup causing distortion. I don't think Caterham uprated the internals.

 

Jim.

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This is a bit of a 'How long is a piece of string?'' question since it depends on an awful lot of factors. What do you do with the car? What tyres are you running? How do you drive? etc. etc.

 

Graduate racers can break both diffs and shafts with 100hp and really bad tyres (Avon CR322), but others seem to be able to run them on the road with a fair bit more.

The current spec half-shafts from Caterham are the 'uprated' ones, but the diffs are still bog standard Morris items as far as I know. The Quaiffe diff should be a whole new unit, and as such a lot stronger, but as others have said, it then makes the shafts the weak point.

 

Stuart

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Speak to Steve at SPC. He offered me a LSD for the Ital for £450. Plus he sends the complete assembly which means all you've got to do is drop out the 1/2 shafts, unbolt the frt of diff, remove diff, bolt in new assembly etc.

 

Ps. I did purchase a 4.1 diff for the Ital. This means I have a std 3.62 diff with *** 350MILES** from new if anybody needs.

 

 

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the article was about alive axle caterham fireblade in the march2001 edition of lowflying the manufacturers/ modifiers of this kit modify the marina axle to take the extra cornering pressure etc. the manufacturers are called Paul Harvey and Doug Newman, their workshop is in Shoreham Sussex i have no other details, but may be obtained from roger green who wrote the article. p.s. i don,t know how much power a marina axle can take depends on the use / abuse it gets, the older bods dealing with caterhams said the axles could take the BDR powered caterhams, i suspect this was only on the road, as a 170 bhp engine racing & hilclimbing would stretch the axle,s capacity a bit.
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FWIW, I believe that Caterham only sold BDR's with the de Dion rear suspension. I've heard that they believed the Ital was only suitable up to 150bhp - though I may be talking out of my a*se there 😳!

 

The 1600 BDR put out 150bhp out which would have stretched the Ital to it's limits.

 

OTOH, there are Zetec owners running considerably more who are doing just fine with the Ital. Careful consideration when applying power is required though *eek*!

 

I'd be interested to hear of any personal experiences that prove this wrong ... please *wink*!

 

Peardrop Now at 1.2 posts per day!

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Quaife's ATB diff (LSD) is £450 list price but I'm sure that I was told £480 when I called them and both these are + VAT. Quaife's No:- 08451307400

You can also get your casing baffled either as an option from Caterham or I called the people who did supply them with their ital axels and was told that if I striped it down first they would TIG weld the baffles in for me for £50. Call Caterham to find out who it is. (Stewart somthing Ithink)

The new half shafts are now machined to finer tolerences than the first ones so this should stop the shafts slipping in the bearings, but does anyone know about the larger woodrough key slot or is this just a machineing error on mine!

 

The old Viking

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My two-pennies-worth....

 

I ran the Ital for 5 years with the 100bhp x/flow and Yoko A510 tyres - not very sticky - and I just started to get bearing end float after this time.

I then put a 165bhp Zetec in and ran it this year and it has survived fine. I have not done many miles and I have never felt like I trust it not to fail on me. I have been pretty careful when it comes to applying power and pulling away in an attempt to reduce the stress on it. This has spolit the 7 as far as I am concerned as it is a nagging doubt in the back of my mind.

Solution: I am swapping to a Ford axle over the next few weeks and I can then not worry about again.

A lot depends on the axle - some seem to be very strong and some, not so. Simon Ray destroyed his twice, first the diff and then a half shalf I think, and was putting 155bhp through it. The diff was standard and went and then an LSD was fitted and this moved the problem elsewhere. Brents axle on the other hand has been putting up with 190+bhp and 032's ands seems fine - although he is swapping to Ford as a precaution for his 210bhp mods.

 

So all it all, you can be lucky and get a good'un, or not and get a weak one. I think the only true fix it to go Ford, but it isn't cheap ☹️

 

Phil Waters

You mean you can drive these?

I thought it was just there to polish 😬

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Surely to some extent the question is what torque can the rear axle stand up to. In which case, any environment that requires a lot of low gear work at full throttle will be more likely to break the axle than higher speed/gear work at full throttle.

 

So, for road use where full throttle is applied for relatively short periods of time in (typically) 3rd or 4th gear the axle will stand up to far more 'power' or torque than a race car that is flat out for 30 minutes at a time.

 

Cheers,

 

Graham

 

Low tech luddite - xflow and proud!

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