I went to the local ford dealership and talked to the guy at the performance shop about 7.5 diffs for my car and he totally confused me. I decided to see what you guys had to say because i believe he was just trying to make a sale.
Which diff works better for 5-spd 6's. I mostly only do freeway driving. but then he started talking about tlok and clicking noises in the rearend. and i was like :wallbash:

Any suggestions, should i just do the t-lok?

 

any chance that you are in florida? and what year is your car? Because i might have a 7.5" rearend for sale, it was rebuild with all new guts, has 3.73's and a tlok.


maybe we could work something out?

if not, i would just go with the ford tlok (you can buy it from ford) thats what i did

 

I like torsen diffs myself. No clutches, no BS just traction. T-Lok still behaves poorly in certain situations. If you like the clutch type, then Auburn is hard to beat. Only downside to torsens is, I'm hearing a few pings from my local pals that they're destroying the worm gears after only moderate abuse.

If you're going to burn a bunch of money on the back end, why not slap in a stock GT 8.8. The t-lok is in those too but at least it's stronger than the 7.5 and inexpensive. You can usually find one on the boards or on craigslist really really cheap.

</my $.02>

 

do you have to do any alterations to the underside of ur car to get the 8.8 to fit, or is it a "simple" bolt-on??

 

it's the same car, they just put different parts in it. That being the case, you can just bolt one right in. I'm not up on my 7.5" axle control arm lengths but if you want to benefit from it as much as possible you'll spend the 300 bucks and get a set of upgraded upper and lower control arms from someone like Maximum Motorsports or Griggs, etc...

The upgrade can also be done with good ol' stock ford upper and lowers. Your car didn't come with a sway bar in all likelihood so you should find one and slap it on. Foxbody bars are suitable to normal street and light race work.

The whole swap will take you from 2-4 hours depending on what kind of tools you have. Nothing fancy is required but air tools really really really speed things up.

To swap, it's pretty much: remove brakes and e-brake cables, remove uppers, support axle on jack, remove lowers at front, remove shocks at top. The whole thing drops out and you can simply bolt a complete 8.8 from any 94-04 GT up in its place. Avoid earlier axles as they're 4 lug and IIRC an extra inch shorter than the 94-98 which are an inch shorter than the 99-04 (shorter=less wide). Don't be afraid of it. It's easy. I swap mine out on a whim in the driveway.

 

as an aside... what are your goals for the car? Do you plan on drag racing, road course/auto-x, or just hard street driving? Those answers will help us determine an appropriate parts list. Usually for a 6er an 8.8 T-lock is more than sufficient. There just isn't the power in most 6banger setups to need anything more. If you're going to do a twin turbo super beast you might want to start at the auburn and go from there. That's not to say (before I get yelled at) that 6ers aren't making big power out there but most are pretty pedestrian and you don't need to burn the extra 450 for an auburn diff.