Hi Adam, I posted this on the smart diff thread, but I am not sure you would see it there, let me know your toughts please:
I have only tried the center and here is what I have seen. I am a little new to off-road, but have been racing on-road longer than I'd like to admit. I have tried it back to back a number of times in Columbus as well as outdoors this last weekend. While it seems to help increase the low speed steering it seems to lack in transition from High to Low speed, you can really see it at the end of a straight away. Both columbus and akron have 90's at the end of the straight requiring significant braking, with the smart diff I almost always push wide to the wall, with the standard diff this doesn't happen. It's as if the smart diff isn't disengaging fast enough, so I went to the next stiffest spring on the smart diff to get it to disengage quicker, and I get the same result?
After pushing into the tubes at the end of the straight every lap at Akron this weekend, after the race I took it out again and put the center back in, and the car was 100 times better at the end of the straight away. Any low speed steering and forward bite that was lost going back to center diff was undetectable, but the end of the straight was night and day. Both tracks had high bite, maybe this in itself makes the smart diff a bad call? Do you guys think a loose track is better suited? Maybe I need to run the front with it to get to turn with the center installed at the end of a straight?
With everyone talking about cutting and or reducing the number of springs I would think that it would further make the "disengagment" worse?
Thx,
Aaron