All of the diffs I have seen (and that has been a few) are the same on the outside. The prop shaft (Trans to Diff) flange is differant. The MY04+ takes M10 bolts and the MY03- takes M8 bolts. All of them used the same bolts/nuts on the output shafts. There is a number of MY04 diffs installed on earlier cars and they have not had any reported issues. I have setup a number of MY04 diffs for MY03- cars.

 

You guys have me worried.

I bought a MY04 diff for my 4.625 final drive to fit to my MY02 car. My car and the 04 diff are UK sourced.

I was told by my local dealer that on his computer the MY04 diff has a different part number but that it came up as a direct replacement for an older diff. Perhaps the MY04 UK car (which is still an AP1 and therefore has the "old" gears) just has the stronger diff that I've heard the AP2 car has? Does this mean I need to source M10 bolts? I think I have the exploded parts diagram for the diff back at the office (I got the dealer to fax it to me) so I'll check on Monday to see if it indicates bolt size and differentiates between pre-MY04 and MY04 diffs.

 

Ok, now as I have pics to include, to show the difference between my diffs.

First here is the original one, which I know is the MY00, and similar as seen in many other pics and S2000s installed:




So the red rectangle shows the flange in MY00, and in this second picture you can see the distance/gap I mentioned, which my MY04 doesn't have in next pic: (red line the gap/distance)



Sorry about the bad pic of probably MY04 diff, but it was pretty dark under my car But I think you can see the flange is straight towards the carrier, without any gap. And this is only on the driver's side, the passenger side is "normal" as in MY00 pics. So the question is, does it affect on driver's side axle/driveshaft or CV joints function somehow?



So if anyone has ever seen this kind of diff, I would really like to know what's crawling under my car Craig, is your MY04 diff similar like in pic 3 from the driver's side?

 

Oh by the way, the carrier is exactly same in both of my diffs. So there is the approx. 1 cm difference on the driver's side.....

 

OK, this looks damaged to me. If the hit was on this side of the car, in the rear, it could have pushed the 1/2 shft into the body of the diff. You did say you got it from a junk yard (breakers) Billman would have noticed this if he was installing it. This is a big differance.

 

That was the thing we were also assuming first. But it seems to work fine. Only the axle was badly installed. This was my mechanics opinion after Billman stated so.

So I took the flanges out from my old diff, but this one on the new one didn't come out at all. So it can be that if I get it off, I can replace it with my old one's flange. If it haven't damaged anything else from inside. OR change the new one's guts to replace broken LSD, or if anything else is broken. God dam it, it's would be more easier to buy new one. But it costs only 3k-5k here or even more.........

 

Looks like the seal shield is missing in that last pic.

Looks like the stub shaft is jammed all the way into the dif.

That is not normal at all, time to investigate the dif. Pop both of the stub shafts out and look inside...

Take a better pic

 

Yep, that what I will do on saturday. Take the diff apart and try to see if I can find the answer to this thing.

It's so odd that there isn't the heat shield at all, and it's way down deeper it should be, and still it's working propely.......

 

Ok. The flange has got an impact and was pushed inside the carrier. As we got after big struggle the flange off, we noticed the seal shield was there also but not in very good shape.

So I just swapped the flange from the old one in the new and everything is working propely. Nothing wrong with the inside stuff in diff.



Just waiting to get the new driveshaft.....