cleaning gum
 

IMO the reason guys are having more success with things like cleaning gum in the front rather than heavier oil is due to the fact that with oil, once you get boss of it and it starts rotating in a certain direction, it will continue to gain speed regarless of how heavy the oil is and the tension becomes lighter, whereas, with something like cleaning gum, regardless of the rotation speed, the tension on the diff remains the same throughout.

Again, this is only my opinion, but all the top guys are using this instead of oil, and there must be some reason for this???

it was hard to drive front gear if used to front spool... it will take some times to drive front gear smoothly... compare to spool, gear tend to spin the car... frankly say, untill now i still not get the max speed for some corners... but at overall infield, gear is faster than spool... of course out of corner, spool is more on power (very obvious)...

for now i am comfort with 300k oil compare 500k... although 500k better at on power... 300k give me more steering (easier to turn the car)

if u want an easy n relax driving... spool is the answer...

The Xceed stuff mentioned is what I use. I have no idea if different brands of the putty are different.

Juho instructed me to pack the diff as full as possible. After one or two runs you might need to add a little more but once it is set it should not change much. You can play with the amount to change the feeling as you would do with oil.

With the TC6, we use the slipper spool which is essentially a diff so the difference between a gear diff and out spool is not as much as it might be with other cars.

The diff is tight enough where there is probably not a lot of diff action. With a spool you have to fight the car into the turn where with the putty diff the car enters the corner more smoothly and faster.

Other cars may react differently but with the TC6 gear diffs are a big improvement.

That's enough for me to give it a go, I've kinda been holding out in hopes the well known rumored TC6.1 updates that may include a gear diff show up. I know you can't really say what, or when, or much of anything, but I have a riddle. If the kit showed up with gear diff option in 2-3 months I'd wait for it, longer then I'd mod the Spec-R....so should I wait? :sneaky:

im of the same opinion, id like to try one and give my honest thoughts, but then id rather wait for a associated one to come one with a swag of update parts

ed

I would say that it could be around that time frame so I would wait.

thats all the info i need

thanks Rick 8)

So with the putty in a front gear diff, why not just run a really tight ball diff up front?

I'm speculating here (lack of tuning with ball diffs myself), but I know my TOP ball diff at full lock up, is still a little bit more free than my micro gear diff with 100k fluid in it, and a full 6 gear diff would be a fair bit stiffer with 100k.

Awesome Rick thank you...I really like the associated diffs and will hold out for their version...the slipper spool works pretty well now that they hard anodized the outdrives. :)

I was thinking of trying that myself. But as I understand it, cranking down the ball diff and trying to run it hard that way will reduce the life you get out of it. Not sure just where, but at some point you reach a point of diminishing return when your replacing parts too often.

This might work too. But this was sort of passed over as an option because it has been a while since ball diffs have been used in the front. When foam racing fell out of fashion, so did running a ball diff in the front.

Ball diffs are also not very consistent. A rebuild or refreshening means it has to be set again and to get it to feel exactly the same is difficult. It is also hard to make ball diffs feel the same from driver to driver. gear diffs are much more consistent so even if a tight ball diff in the front worked I am not sure you would want to use it.

tight ball diff
 

tried a ball diff a tight as i could in front last week. go round for a minute and it loosens up! no matter how tight you get it, it will never be as tight as a gear diff with gum or heavy oil.

In the foam tire days, guys used to run Losi brown grease, which was quite a bit thicker in the front diff at times. That's probably the way to go if you're trying to run a "tight" ball diff.

you can also sandwich an o-ring inside between the pulley and the outdrive/ring (inside the i.d. of the ball track). it's trial and error, but if you're married to the idea of a ball diff, this will give you enough drag to be as resistive as you'd like based on the materal and/or thickness.

a benefit to this is that you don't have to crank down on the diff tension. just make sure it doesn't slip, and off you go. this is just an approximation of a gear diff, though, as the resistance of a gear diff goes up with shear rate, while this type of drag doesn't.

Hi Rick,
Just out of interest, have you tried running 500k oil in the front diff? Or just run the putty?
Just looking for your opinion on a comparison really, been running a front gear with kyosho 500k recently, and whilst I've run putty in a my ff03 FWD gear diff before, last time I tried it in the tc I damaged the gears on closing the casing, so never ran it!

Regards
Ed