Need Advice for New Colt Rear Axle

Use:
1. '79-80 Toyota Celica Supra. Had discs, same bolt pattern and can be found with OEM LSD. Cheap gears are available from 4x4 PU boys.
2. '83-84 Rx7 GSE. Same bolt pattern, discs and good OEM LSD. Gears are expensive.
3. Volvo P1800E/ES '70-73. Has discs. Cheap LSD from junk yard. Cheap gears from 4x4 boys. 5x108 pattern.
- All are within 2" on width of Colt

---

- RWD rocks -

Topi Wrote:
> 2. '83-84 Rx7 GSE. Same bolt pattern, discs and
> good OEM LSD. Gears are expensive.

GSL-SE is 84-85. The OEM LSD in those supposedly has fewer
clutches than the standard GSL units. Axles and bearings got
larger in '84 so year is important (there are no small-axle GSL-SE),

Went to a Rallycross yesterday. Besides crushing the floor where
the lower links attach to the shell (this car is done) and hammering
the Watts link into the floor, I gave myself a degree or two of
negative camber on the left rear. I'd been told that the big bearing
housings were a bunch weaker than the earlier stuff, but didn't believe
it. So it's either backbrace/underbrace, or start hunting a Toyota rear.

Gears aren't that expensive, depending on what you want. The diff
was whored out to Kia and Honda and has been in use from the 70's
to the present. 4.44 and 4.78 gears are commonplace. 5.12s are
expensive The Toyota rear would be a better bet if you want more
variety than that.

---

Pete Remner
Cleveland, Ohio

1984 RX-7 (rallycross thing)
1978
Silence is golden, but duct tape is silver.

If you can tell me where to find them, keeping the axle would be a consideration. While the shafts are small, the whole thing is pretty light.

Thanks!

Wilson


Haztoys Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Mr Wilson ...
> Are you wanting to keep the Mitsu axle ..Those
> who say there in the know are not .. There are LSD
> and gears ez anuff...
>
> Let me know
>
> Captain Gear Box
>
> Hazardous Toys inc

---

"Talk about drugs. Driving a car like that, going that fast, it’s like all the drugs at once." - Tommy Byrne

"Now, Pinky, if by any chance you are captured during this mission, remember you are Gunther Heindriksen from Appenzell. You moved to Grindelwald to drive the cog train to Murren. Can you repeat that?" - The Brain

The gears are in the "front" of 4x4 trucks and Monteros ...3.90..4.22..4.62..There's a rare for this country 4.88.. But the Montero guys bring them in from down under..Real early trucks had car diffs in them .. Most trucks "around here" seam to have 3.90.."I'm hearing that down south alot of trucks are 3.54.. But "my" travels have not come across alot of 3.54 trucks.. Theres a tag on the diff back side that says the gears ..White tag open diff..Yellow tag LSD...The tags are still there out west I should say..GEN2 X-cab trucks are were the 4.22 are hiding ... 4.62 are in Montero's

The cars did come with LSD's...Theres a yellow tag on the drivers door jam on all Mitzu's if it has a LSD..Car or truck.. I have a set up 4.22 and 4.62 drop outs..Setting at the shop.. Theres a strange for Mitsu wagon AWD car "Colt" thingy wagon Sh%$t box of the late 80's.. That is the same "drop out" as a car..Thats were one of my LSD's came from for the car diff..The other is from a Fire Arrow...

That I know of theres only 3 Mitzu gear sets ..(1)Early car same as early Starion and rear of goofy wagon and front of 4X4 truck..(4 cyl truck)..And Montero (Have not had my hands on a V6 front)..(2) rear of truck and montero and late Starion ,RWD Van..(3)..DSM Talon AWD rear (real small gear set)..

On the LSD on the cars there two different cases.. Ones wider then the other..I have a mess of parts just not set down to see what would fit what on the small gear stuff.. Early Starion in car..?? .. Or the stuff "Down Under" OZ and AU with the front of the Montero..???..Rear of 3000GT..

Truck LSD are EZ.. Alot of Monteros have them... GEN1 truck is narrower housing over all then the 88 on up... Its six lug..that would need fixing..The RWD van is truck gears ..No clue on the over all..But its five lug ..The mad fast Arrow some years back ran a truck rear..

What ring gear size ??...What axle spline ..??? What lug patern..??..Need more info..Pull the gears from the diff and mail me the rest.. What gear numbers you want..?? No clue what diff your running..So my info maybe off

Mother Mitzu put LSD in a mess of the stuff..Its were we should be looking more often.. They make you pay for Toyota parts at a junk yard..Mitzu parts are free in my neck of the woods..The Mitzu gears are the same size as the Toy (truck parts)..Just as stronge ..The axle bearings are "shimed set" and a "Monster timken bearing" on the ends .. That are grease packed..Not the cheap sh%$#t roller bearing Toyota uses on most of there stuff...Sorry Kids the Mitzu axle is MUCH better ..I blasted a rock with my truck out dicking off hard anuff to pull the wheel off the side of the truck ..You got it ..Get out and theres three wheels on the truck ..And ones gone ...Bent the housing and spring f%$KED UP the back of the truck..Bolted on a new wheel and crab walking we went home..But the axle shaft is not bent and is still in the truck..Housing was trashed..Just nuts the hit it took ..

And the last junk yard raid to the valley ..Got me three Montero drop outs for 120.00 all LSD..Cheap ..Cheap..He looked at me like I had ahole in my head LOL ..For wanting them.. There were a shelf full of Mitzu diffs.. He said take all you want ..They never sale.. ... He had no clue that they were LSD.... Good I love Ebay...$$$$$..That hall will help pay the bills..LOL

And 99% of the Mitzu LSD diff's the plates look fine ..The "plate stack" is "looose" stock ..Put thats ez to fix..


A Dana 30 Volvo is a way to go .. There strong for how small they are..

Theres the 84-85 (??) Celica.. NOT Supra.!!.. Has the narrow est Toy rear end ..That uses truck parts in the drop out ..

Truck gears are over kill for a car in rally..It would fix any and all rear end problems.. I guess the older I get the more I want to see if I can "just" get the right amount of strangth in the drive tran ... Less HP loss..Less for the motor to have to turn...What HP you turning..

I just put a GEN2 RX7 LSD in a Rotory truck diff of all thinks ... We just came up with a plate LSD for a FWD DSM..And thats a OEM part ... So the parts are there ..Just no one has taken the time to see what fits what..

Sorry on some of the time,, dates,, and colors.. have the info at the shop..Sorry so bad on the gramer ..Will clean it up in a day or so its late..Better at wrenching

JVL...You taking notes in class today..

Have A good day

David

Hazardous Toys inc

We are running the original axle. The shafts are tiny little things, less than an inch, but off hand I don't know whether they are 22mm or 19mm or 18mm. We've got a spare and I'll stick a caliper on it after Rally Tennessee.

Just had the diff out to fix the axle, as we had to clean up all the metal shavings from the sheared shaft and reweld some cracks in the original welds on the diff. I hate gear oil. We'll pull it out one of these days, but I am in no hurry.

Ring gear is 4 something, but I don't know exactly. Its in the paperwork, so again I'll dig through it after RT.

Engine is the C-2. It's rumored to be around 140 at the crank, but we have not dyno'ed it yet. Adjusting the carbs is a matter of seeing whether fuel or black smoke is coming out the tailpipe.

I'll start looking at the mitsu truck pieces - nice to have a co-owner who works for a half-cut importer and is in the loop for that kind of stuff.

---

"Talk about drugs. Driving a car like that, going that fast, it’s like all the drugs at once." - Tommy Byrne

"Now, Pinky, if by any chance you are captured during this mission, remember you are Gunther Heindriksen from Appenzell. You moved to Grindelwald to drive the cog train to Murren. Can you repeat that?" - The Brain

Haztoys Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> JVL...You taking notes in class today..

No David, I'm not.
The reason I thought of using a Dana in the Colt, and Mazda was that way back in the late 80s we had a couple of really fast guys up here, Vern Johnson from Portland and Grant Whiting from Olympia with Vern in a Toyota and Grant in a Colt.
And these guys were fast, theiur stage time were consistantly with the top 3 for Nationals, or better.

In the 4-5 years Grant drove the Colt, he broke axles or diffs about 6 times.
In the late 90s /early 00ies, an promising young guy from Bellingham drove the same ol car and he broke axles or diffs at least 5 times.

The big halfshafts were 22mm.
The Volvo was 29mm.
The ring gear is somewhere around 6.2", and the Volvo is 7.2"

One is proven weak, the other is proven strong.

I build stuff as if peoiple are going to drive them fast and hard, and I want a big margin of safety.

We are after all Privateers.
>
> Have A good day
>
> David
>
> Hazardous Toys inc
>
>

---

John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

David,

You will find that Mitsubishi truck/Montero gear sets & LSD's are not compatible with the small 3rd member of the 1970's Colts & Arrows. I have both. But if you think it's possible, please go do it and come back and tell us how.

The Fire Arrow (2.6L) shares the same platform as Wilson's Colt, but the Fire Arrow model has an entirely different rear end. The Fire Arrow has bigger axles and the housing is set up for Disk brakes. Mitsubishi stopped development of that car before LSD's or gear sets were ever produced for it. They're all open diff's with 3:54's. (If memory serves, Mark B. knows how to put the smaller 3rd member & axles from the early Colts into the larger Fire Arrow housing to get gearing/LSD options in a disk brake axle housing.)

Gen 1 Montero's are all 4:62, some with LSD's (like mine). Most Mitsubishi pickups with LSD's are 4:22. The pickup rear-end is wider than the Montero. The Montero rear-end is slightly wider that Wilson's Colt. But, as you've pointed out it's a 6-lug set-up that would need to be changed for Wilson's use. They are very very stout (and heavy).

But, let us ALL not forget that Wilson is running a 1.6L single cam engine. It's a terrific nearly bulletproof engine, but as long as he runs that engine he doesn't need a HUGE/STOUT rear-end of any kind. Fully race prep'd for World Rally Competition, Mitsubishi was getting about 165hp/155T. If he can't find early Mitsubishi gears/with an LSD, almost anything else that fits will do just fine. (The car JVL was talking about had a torquey, mildly built 2.6L that routinely ate small Toyota rear-ends). Wilson's 1.6L Colt/Lancer is the kind that was fully developed by Mitsubishi specifically for World Rally Competition and the small axles and tiny LSD's worked just fine. JVL still has one of my early Colt LSD's in his shop. If you ever want to hear him belly-laugh, just ask him how big and stout it is. But, still, that is what Mitsubishi used in the 1970's when they were winning things like the Southern Cross and the east African Safari.

Rich Smith

Edit/PS: Wilson's other option is to stay with the welded diff. Many people ran welded diff's in Colt's and Arrow's with engines of all sizes without ever having a problem. I think the fact that Wilson's welded diff failed is unusual for that 1.6L car.




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/03/2007 04:04PM by Rich Smith.

For the record, we when the dif broke we were making a U-turn at Sandhills. We dropped both tires into the sand,then started accelerate as he stepped back on to the pavement...classic axle/dif breaking scenario, not a fluke on stage failure.

WE have also hear from previous owners that the car had survived with a welded dif for most of its life. We did see evidence of a previous break when installing the new axle, so it is not the first tie.

From reading all of the posts, looking what I already have, and considering our goals/plans for the car, at this point I am thinking of welding up the GTS open/disc rear end I have in the garage. I think the GTS comes with a 4.30, so that will be decent. The axles are way bigger than the colts, and only slightly smaller than the fire arrows, so it should be sufficient as long as we don't smack anything.
The AE86 dif looks to be slightly lighter than the fire arrow.

I also recently heard a rumor of 3-$400 gear sets, which sure beats the $900 TRD units.

Rich Smith Wrote:
(If
> memory serves, Mark B. knows how to put the
> smaller 3rd member & axles from the early
> Colts into the larger Fire Arrow housing to get
> gearing/LSD options in a disk brake axle housing.)
>
Hey Rich,

Thanks for the plug; wish I DID know. Our conversion of a Fire Arrow to 1.6L C2+ engine and other C2 bits involoved swapping out the larger Fire Arrow Axle for the smaller, earlier 1.6"/2.0L axle. We left the diff open, and adapted the Fire Arrow rear discs and some front calipers to the rear axle to get rid of the lawn mower sized rear drum brakes that came on the 70's era Japanese cars and give it some real rear braking capability. It was a training car so to speak, so leaving the diff open was good for my son to learn to control traction better IMO, and the lighter axle is some advantage in maintaining traction and handling overall with the stock rear leaf spring setup.

Regards,
Mark B.

mhooper Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> From reading all of the posts, looking what I
> already have, and considering our goals/plans for
> the car, at this point I am thinking of welding up
> the GTS open/disc rear end I have in the garage.

It was in fact a GTS Corolla that was in the famous terry Hackler/Grant Whiting/Roger Jackson "Colt that would never die".
That they broke 9-10 times.

> I think the GTS comes with a 4.30, so that will be
> decent. The axles are way bigger than the colts,
> and only slightly smaller than the fire arrows, so
> it should be sufficient as long as we don't smack
> anything.

They are about 20mm maybe 21, Big Colt whatever 22mm.

Useless junk.

And Rich should know better than to quote WRC from the 70s regarding Jap stufff: THEY CHANGED PARTS CONSTANTLY.

> The AE86 dif looks to be slightly lighter than the
> fire arrow.
>
> I also recently heard a rumor of 3-$400 gear sets,
> which sure beats the $900 TRD units.

Whatever. The boys in the "Colt that would never die" broke axles consyantly but at least they were driving hard and always in top 10 if not top 3 OA.

---

John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/04/2007 03:57PM by john vanlandingham.

JVL...Damn your pissy when people don't listen to you!

Ok, so I see your point. Do it once, do it right. I HAVE seen 3 GTS dif/axle failures personaly. I think we should take your advice. On the bright side I can probably get enought out of my AE86 stuff to cover the volvo bits.

I just did a search on Car-Part for locking rear dif assemblies for an 85 model. It brought up several options, all from volvo 750 or 760 series.

Is this the correct dif? am I on the right track?

You mentioned you may be putting a 8" toy dif in a Volvo... We have a lot of 4 pinion 8" assemblies in stock,including OEM LSD units. The 4.56s and 4.88s go very quickly if they are LSD, but a 4.10 LSD would be very reasonable if you wanted to buy an aftermarket gear set.

Thanks for the input.
Hooper

Looking at the RX7 rear, the GSLSE(?) from 84-85 has the right wheel bolt pattern, has disks, and appears to have readily available lsds and ring and pinions. What are the plusses and minuses of this axle?

Thanks,

Wilson

---

"Talk about drugs. Driving a car like that, going that fast, it’s like all the drugs at once." - Tommy Byrne

"Now, Pinky, if by any chance you are captured during this mission, remember you are Gunther Heindriksen from Appenzell. You moved to Grindelwald to drive the cog train to Murren. Can you repeat that?" - The Brain

wvonkessler Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Looking at the RX7 rear, the GSLSE(?) from 84-85
> has the right wheel bolt pattern, has disks, and
> appears to have readily available lsds and ring
> and pinions. What are the plusses and minuses of
> this axle?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Wilson

Weaker that Toiletta Commodah.
WEAK. The tubes bend from diff out to flanges.
The axle shafts bend.
The diffs blow their brains out.

Just tried to convince a guy out here 3 years ago to PLAN to replace it.
FOUND HIM A SPARE for $75.
He bent his, did another event, blew it to ratshit and didn't have a spare.

Face it Wilson, OEM Japanses car diffs are for getting groceries.

We wouldn't go to all the trouble if they weren't constantly failing.
Look at Ford Escort, they came with the GKN built "English axle", good up to about 150 bhp. 25,4mm halfshafts.
All these Japanese things are max about 22mm.
Do the area. The the percents.

For reliable rally Ford use the "Atlas" from 3.0 Capri: BIGGER RING GEAR, BIGGER HALF SHAFTS.

It is also what many of the Euro based Japanese factory rally temas used, at least in the beginning and what Millen used in his fast Rx7s.

For that matter Millen used Escort Gp4 front cross member, steering, struts, gearbox and axle.

---

John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

Scary enough, the big-axle rears are weaker than the small-axle rears. The housings are weaker, and when you bend one for whatever reason, it overstresses the axle. The "big power" street guys either run the early small-axle rears and life the axles or they just fix the problem at the source and get something beefy.

The "beefy" that they get is a Ford 8.8, which may be strong, but the diffs suck and C-clip axles are scary. (Break an axle, lose the wheel)

---

Pete Remner
Cleveland, Ohio

1984 RX-7 (rallycross thing)
1978
Silence is golden, but duct tape is silver.

So Wilson, Mke,

Did the replacement rear axle survive Rally TN?

Mark B.