Way of the Exploding Diff
by Darren on Mar.15, 2009, under Skoda
One thing I hope I’ve always been when writing this is honest. And I’ll be completely honest – retiring from Rallye Sunseeker 2009 has really knocked me sideways. WAY more than any other retirement before, including Rally GB 2007. The Sunseeker has always been so good for me, and always turned out OK, but in addition, it’s the reason I started rallying, so it’s particularly close to my heart. What makes it worse is my route to work takes me past several of the stage entries and on the rally route, so I kept seeing where we should have been (all the stages we missed out on doing, etc). Anyway, I’m largely over it now. Sniff, sniff….
So, with that out the way, got the car up on stands and started taking it apart. The whole lot won’t be coming out this weekend as I’m making 100% sure that I don’t re-injure myself before going snowboarding over the Easter holiday (first time in a few years), but I thought I’d see what bits would fall off or out of the gearbox with little effort. With the sumpguard off and the car on stands, it was fairly easy to see the damage, and removing the offside driveshaft was at least made easy by the destruction of that side of the diff.
And here’s what I’ found so far:
It looks as if the diff casing has shattered, but I have no idea why at the moment – it’s not what I’d originally thought (that the gears inside had broken up), so the full post-mortem will have to come after the box is out and dismantled. However, there are large bits of the diff casing missing (as they aren’t where they ‘were’ – it’s more than just the end having popped off the diff), so where they’ve ended up will be a big issue. As will the bill.
