Front limited slip diff possibility?

[Ksnau]

Hello,

I wanted to put this out there in case anyone can help. I was trying to see if aftermarket limited slip diffs that can go in the focus RS would fit in our bronco sport front diff which is also called the PTU since It seems like the drivetrains are pretty similar, although I know they got the 2-3 instead of the 2.0 but one guy's already proved on the Maverick that those two engines both bolt up the same and at least on the Maverick even the wiring was the same and a guy got it. 2-3 working on a Maverick. Pretty cool. I think it's the same guy who used the Lincoln Corsair 2.3 turbo on a 2.0 to get a little more power.

Anyways I know that Ford even put the Quaife limited slip diffs in stock on the last few years of the focus RS. And I thought it would be really cool if we could have the front and rear limited slips instead of just relying on the braking system for the front because it can only do so much and it can heat up your brakes a lot too if you do it for a long time. I thought it would also be really cool for the lower trims that don't have the trick rear diff unit also and have to solely rely on brakes for traction control.

I was looking at pictures of them online and the cases on the outside are slightly different, but it looks like it might be similar enough that it would work. I emailed quaife about it but all they did was send me a picture of one of their limited slip diffs as a cutout section image. It wasn't like a technical drawing with measurements or anything.

Is there anyone on here that might be able to tell if the center sections are the same and if we could put one of those in a bronco sport. I assume the PTU is the same across the board, but I don't know for sure and I know there's some variation Tl at least in the transmissions for Ford's AWD system, especially from like a full size vehicle to a smaller one like ours. I know there's usually different ratings and internals.

Anyways, I thought it would be really cool and I was looking for someone who could help me figure out if it would actually work or not. Because I'm looking for my next project on My baby bronco and I was wanting to do this if it's possible or if not I'm going to try and put 360 camera on my car next.

Ps, the air suspension is still awesome and I've taken it off-road in snow mud rocks up crazy hills and It all has worked fine. The only issue I've noticed is my adjustment nut on the driver side. Front strut has come loose twice during off-roading I think from all the vibration. So I think I'm going to have to put a little loctite on it. But that's fine because I don't plan on adjusting that hardly ever.

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[Ksnau]

Here's the diagram Quaife sent me of the focus RS unit.

 

[FuryMachine84]

I hope a few of these companies get with the program and start making more mechanical upgrades instead of cosmetic and camping type of stuff.
You'd think Dana would be all over if since the already do stuff for the fulm size.

 

[Ksnau]

Well, I haven't had time to work on this much since I looked at the initial diagram but it's looking like the housing might not fit so they would have to manufacture a whole new part just for us and on the full size bronco you would see a lot of people buying that, but I don't think a lot of the broncos sport owners would be willing to dish out two Grand for this and actually only bad Land owners would probably do it even though it would really help the other trims too since they don't have the special rear diff, but it is a big out-of-pocket cost you'd be looking at like two grand to have someone else install it a thousand really'd be like $1,100 for the part a couple hundred for the other parts and then probably like $700 to install it or more. So that's why I was really hoping that it would fit the exact same part. Then they wouldn't have to put in any r&d time.

Also, the Badlands PTU which is the same thing as the front diff is actually different then the other trims. Or rather It has a different part number than the other trims. It ends with a and the other trims base/bb/ob ends with a b or vice versa I can't remember off the top of my head. I found that out last week so I think that's just because we can lock our center diff and the other trims can't and that seems more of a software thing than hardware. But you know who knows. Unless we can talk to the engineer who did it but that could be another potential problem.

Basically right now I was focused on getting a travel trailer (clipper ROK 12000) but of course the model I wanted. They supposedly sold out a day before I called them to buy it. So now I'm focused on getting a automatic controller for my air suspension and getting rid of the manual 7 switch controller from the 90's, so I can have presets And it'll actually measure off of height sensors, and I don't have to mess with it each time I changed something trying to get everything leveled out how I want it with switches.

after that I'm probably going to go back to getting 360 camera set up on my car And adding cameras on my side mirrors and one underneath kind of like what the full size bronco has and the raptors and such. But once I have those two things done I'm going to go back to this. See if I can get my hands on a Badlands PTU off the car and actually measure the exact dimensions to see if it would fit that part and then we'll know for sure. If anyone else has time and the ability, it'd be awesome if they could do this since I probably won't get to it until next calendar year.

Another option because it didn't sound like quaife wanted to check for me but we could always also ask wave track and see if they can figure it out for us cuz they also offer one for the focus RS.

 

[Mark S.]

I hope a few of these companies get with the program and start making more mechanical upgrades instead of cosmetic and camping type of stuff.
You'd think Dana would be all over if since the already do stuff for the fulm size.

R&D costs for stuff like this demands a return, which means there must be a market. The Bronco Sport is hampered by low ground clearance and the location of the powertrain control module when it comes to off-road capability. You can't do much about ground clearance because wheel well size limits tire size. Relocating the PCM introduces a whole host of other problems. Any really serious off-roader--which would be the only target market for expensive major mechanical upgrades--will start with a vehicle better suited to hard-core off-road driving.

 

[RSH]

Could be an interesting project.
Currently I don't see a market for mechanical limited slip capability for the Sport.
Not to say that there are not any tuner types looking into it just as you are. After all, you did the air suspension conversion.

 

[Ksnau]

Yeah and that's why I'm saying it would work out great if we could use the same part because they're not going to put the r&d time into this unless we can like prepay for an order of like 20 or more and even then it probably have to be a bigger order. We do also have the Maverick tremor crowd that might want some, but again it's you know maybe one out of every thousand owners might even consider it alone. Actually drop the two grand or more. I didn't really expect it to be something for other people. I went through the same thing whenever I had my 2011 V6 mustang and I just made my own bracket and intercooler setup for a vortec V3 so it's nothing new to. It's just something that I'm doing for myself. So I'll cross my fingers and unfortunately have other priorities right now. But once I get to this I'll let you know. Unless someone beats me to it.

I was reading and I spoke to one at a car show it seems like a lot of the focus. RS. Guys said it made a big difference And well, I know that's on the track versus us off-road but traction is traction and I know on full size off-roaders that the front diff lock makes a huge difference to just a rear diff lock especially going up hill. So I know we're limited in ground clearance. But if I can get this I want it And I'm still surprised at the places that I've got this thing passed with just good line choices and a spotter (And a lot of that was before the air suspension when I could raise it up an extra inch and a half).

Also you know it could turn out that the stock part doesn't fit but it's just like a tiny difference. And if I can prove that to Quaife or wavetrac maybe they would do a new part number if they can tell that it wouldn't take a lot of r&d work? Because what I am worried about is it's a very different housing from the focus RS. To ours, but you know Ford uses this PTU on almost all of its all-wheel drive cars and. It seems stupid to change the internals. Yeah I get. You might need to change the housing to fit different engines and purposes and different body sizes. But why have a different ring and worm gear when you don't have to? But also they might have to because they're pushing SUVs that can be almost twice as heavy. I did watch an interesting video on an explorer st where they took one of those cheap traction AIDS and replaces the inner part of an open diff to make a limited slip diff And so if this doesn't work out, maybe I'll see if I can find one that might fit for our s as a backup plan.

 

[BLUEOVALRACER]

R&D costs for stuff like this demands a return, which means there must be a market. The Bronco Sport is hampered by low ground clearance and the location of the powertrain control module when it comes to off-road capability. You can't do much about ground clearance because wheel well size limits tire size. Relocating the PCM introduces a whole host of other problems. Any really serious off-roader--which would be the only target market for expensive major mechanical upgrades--will start with a vehicle better suited to hard-core off-road driving.

And wouldn't a Front LS diff kind of mess with how the 4WD system works when it detects wheel spin?

 

[Ksnau]

No it would compliment it. Honestly the focus RS does the same thing that ours do using the brakes to aid in traction control but that only goes so far. And honestly if I remember right, if you get a wheel in the air, the brakes can't do anything for traction and a limited slip div would, but I am finding out some information that might make this all a no-go from the beginning so

 

[Ksnau]

Okay, I can pretty much confirm that this is a no-go at this point. I'm a little embarrassed but I'll go ahead and share. I was under the impression that the differential was in the PTU because that was how it was explained in numerous posts and it looked like it would possibly fit in there from the pictures I've been looking at cuz I'd mostly been looking at the PTU housings from this point.

Our differential is in our transmission which seems really weird to me and I have had some cars that were based on the C2 platform but I never really done anything but change the transmission fluid on them so I hadn't really thought about how any of that worked on these FWD based vehicles. I'm used to how like the full size bronco works, how you have a transfer case and a front axle with a front diff all by itself.

So anyways, I was watching a video about changing the front diff on a focus. I cannot believe I didn't didn't look at this beforehand and was just trying to go off of what I'd read and the differential I found out is inside the transmission. So then I watched a video taking apart the 8f35 transmission that's in our cars. Now it wasn't for an all-wheel drive bronco sport but doesn't seem like it would be very different since it's the PTU that affects the all-wheel drive versus just not having it there and having a longer cv shaft I assume .

So anyways they look to be pretty different and on the focus RS. There's actually 10 bolts that bolts to the ring gear but in the video I was watching the differential looks like on on this 8f35 it is held on by splines possibly cuz he just slid it off and didn't have to unbolt it from the ring gear which stayed in the transmission when he slid off the differential unit and just looks like a totally different unit. So pretty embarrassing. But like I said I hadn't done a lot of looking into this. You know it made sense in my head same platform, sure manual transmission versus an automatic. For some reason I had it in my head that the differential was in the PTU and that was what I needed to focus on and unfortunately there wasn't any information on the internals of the PTU so that's my bad. I'm going to leave this on here for a little bit and then I'm just going to delete this thread because it doesn't seem like it's even worth it. I don't think that it would be possible and I was fine with taking off the PTU to do this but dropping the transmission to try to figure out if they're the same. I'm not doing that. Especially when it looks like I can tell just from watching a video that they're completely different setups. If anything changes I'll let you know

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