Differentials - help me I am new here.

[jones]

My car is an Australian market air cooled, so badged as an FSM Niki.  I bought is 2 years ago for my daughters to use in our Aussie equivalent of autotests - we call them motorkhanas.  If anyone is interested, there is a photo of the car on our Club website

http://www.hsccq.asn.au/photos.htm

I bought if from a wrecking yard, so its a little rough but its been good fun.  The only mods so far have been cut down rear coils and a reverse eye front spring.  I sometimes run 13" wheels and sticky rubber.

My problem is that I have destroyed two differentials by breaking the teeth off the planet gears.  While I appreciate that running competitive slaloms is a little hard on diffs, the car is only driven by teenage girls.

Can anyone shed any light on what is happening here and suggest a fix.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Rusty's Uncle]

Hi and welcome to the forum. I think that it is great that you rescued that Niki from the brink and have given it a new fun life.
I am no expert but I can't help thinking that something is not quite set up properly there as that is quite unusual in my experience. Do you set up the gearboxes by instinct or do you follow the manual ?
Normaly the boxes tend to suffer with the gears rather than the diff.

[gsxr126]

G'day Jonesy, welcome.

I'm suspecting that you need to adjust the thickness of the pinion shaft shim. Page 50 and in particular FIG 6:6 in the instruction manual will be what you need to do. I've never done it though so cant offer any tips.

Cheers,
Dan

[JNR500]

Hi Jones,

I can highly suggest talking to Angelo at APF motors in QLD he is in Boondall, he is a wizard with the 126 gearbox.

Cheers