Probably. Plus the scrub makes you fight the car.

Putty makes the diff hard to turn but is still smooth.

Improvements in cars and tires which increase traction make gear diff use possible. And better materials make them reliable.

Thanks Art, corner entry is what I'm working to improve, but I have other things to try also. I'm with you on waiting for the AE version gear diff, and it wont take much to build a tight ball diff with some slick voodoo tar of some type and see.

some people may see a gear diff as going backwards,but the ball diff came in when we were using brushed motors and nimh batteries.
the efficiency and slight weight loss of a ball diff is not such a important factor now with brushless and lipo,were as strength and less maintenance of a gear diff is probably making them more popular again.
just a thought

The Yokomo made gear diff I just fitted to my Photon, is basically the same weight as stock ball diff, seriously I filled it with oil ready to be put in the car, and checking the weight it came up like 1g different to the ball diff.

Yoko also did a damn good job designing it, the cups have some coating on them as hard as hell, it took no fine tuning for the build, just fill and go, and it's butter smooth...

If you compare the rooting around you do with a ball diff, to what I had to do with the yoko diff, it's so not a content between the two.

A kneaded eraser is the same thing as the cleaning putty, and is available at any art/craft store..Micheal's, Hobby Lobby, etc...

That sounds just about perfect -- I drive Mod Mini-Z with a ball diff and we've been using pockets in the spur gear holes to lock up the balls and achieve this same effect. Lately there's been talk of going back to gear diffs since the on-throttle torque mashes the gears together, providing a tightening effect that's stronger than what the spur gear pockets have been providing. I think this is also part of the reason why 1/10 TC has been going to gear diffs -- the on-throttle stability provided by the tightening action is really significant and, at least for Mini-Z, lets the car put down a lot more power.

That said, I prefer the 100% smoothness feel of a ball diff though, so thanks for this bit of info! I'm gonna try some and see if I can get that tightening effect without buying a new diff.

Good find Rob! Thanks

Other than that, 4 years of art school down the drain.

Are you sure the ball diff weighs less than a gear diff? I have compared weights before using a postal scale and found gear diff to be lighter by a gram.

what is this 'putty' people are using?

surely not the same putty you use for model building to fill up holes, cracks etc.

I have some 500k diff oil which I will use first

Think non-hardening putty, like stuff that never sets or goes hard as such.

Would that cleaning putty work? It should stay soft...

I have read somewhere of someone using cleaning putty, I think, never tried myself.

Cleaning putty is what is typically used when people say they are using putty.

Has anyone ever tryed silly putty?