Differential Heat?

[fry61]

Came back from the Peaks meet,motorway/dual carriageway for 200+ miles at between 60/75 mph all without problems. Unloaded the car & trailer tent & noticed that boot floor was warm; can only assume heat was from diff which is 50/60mm below. So question, is this O.K? How warm would the diff internals be;does anything need checking;diff was filled with new H/P oil when Florin was built 12,000 miles ago.

[ZeroKnowledge]

mine also gets hot after long drive

sometimes I can only keep my hand on for a few secs

 

been looking for some sticky on temp gauge to see what temp actually is

[Snapperpaul]

Mmmm must check mine sometime

I would assume that as the Sierra diff is used in V6 powered Sierras, Cosworth and many high powered kit cars it's fairly robust and we don't hear of many failures

[philshelton]

Quite a large amount of heat goes down the transmission tunnel so could be a combination of hot air down tunnel and little air flow round diff other than hot air that's coming down the tunnel ????????????

[fry61]

Ours is an open three sided tunnel, the sides of which are cool at all times,Phil.

[Grim]

if there's no vertical play in the driveshafts coming from the diff and it has oil in it, i would be happy enough that it's ok.

Diffs can put of a few kW of heat. If the drive train absorbs 20%, and it takes 50bhp to propel a car at 70mph, 10bhp = 7.5Kw spread between gearbox, diff and tyres.

[Graham B]

The diff in the NIssan 200sx donor has its own oil cooler attached. It was a 3.92 unit, so the internals would have been doing the same work as the Sierra one. Obviously the Japs noticed that they get hot..

[fry61]

A few "Brillo" pads between diff & boot floor then Graham.

[Graham B]

No Bob, the Hood provides better airflow down the tunnel, than the flat floored Nissan.