Eaton Front Diff eLocker

Eaton or ARB both will work, both have their pros and cons. You will read people saying how you are more likely to snap CVs with a front locker, of course it's all situational, but I don't fully agree. For me what I notice coming from open diffs to locked front and rear. Your trial ride thought process on an obstacle will go from (open diffs) how fast/how much momentum do it need to clear this, to (locked) how slow can I crawl up this. So much more control and alot less skinny pedal. I believe lockers translate to less damage to your vehicle, again trail specific. All of us have been out with enough people that are locked and open, you can see how much more effort it takes to clear the same obstacle open vs locked.

 

So I had a similar issue with the ARB where oil came out the breather in the engine bay. I'm thinking since our clam is so tight the locker takes up alot of gear oil space within the diff. So when we fill it to factory specs it might actually be over filled a little. I ended up extending the front diff breather and added an in line fuel filter from a dirt bike, the larger kind not the tiny one to help create space. It allows any air to separate as well. Have not had any issues since. And whel I say extended only like a foot or so, just so its not in that dight space next to the battery.

 

I had front and rear lockers on my old truck. I wheeled a lot of technical trails in Colorado and Moab. I rarely used the front. In my new 2nd gen build I dont plan on installing one. atrac should fit the bill well for me.

Dont install one until you know you absolutely need one. Focus on recovery gear and techniques first.

Update 1.5 years later: I am about to install ECGS diffs with 4.88 gears and a Eaton front locker. While I doubt I will use the front locker all that often I am excited to have it. I am not a throttle down type of driver, so CV breakage is not a big concern for me. I think my old truck with it's solid axle had so much flex that I did not need my front locker. Now with IFS, it can be nice to have. I love the way IFS is on the road, but offroad it's not as capable as a solid axle. I had to laugh when I came back across this post, since I am going directly against my own advice.

 

If you fill the diff to where it spills out and dont let it drip to almost nothing coming out it will be overfilled. Your still filling to that amount. Ive always done it that way and never had an issue in the 2.5 years ive had the locker installed for what its worth.

 

I'll admit, my driveway is on a slope, so my truck probably isn't perfectly level when I'm topping off fluids. I do my best, but it seems quite possible that I simply overfilled the diff. Interestingly, it never overflowed for the first year of use, including a break-in cycle and oil change, then thousands of miles in 4x4. But the majority of that year was spent without ever engaging the front locker, simply because it took me that long to finally wire it up. (I eventually made a custom PCB to get the interlock behavior I wanted.) In fact, I think the oil overflow occurred during my very first "serious" off-road use of the front locker.

It makes sense that an air locker could displace oil when engaged, as I assume there's some sort of piston (or equivalent mechanism) wherein pressurized air would be introduced, causing it to expand, to effect engagement of the locking mechanism. Whatever volume is displaced by the pressurized air would cause the oil level to rise, potentially erupting oil from the breather line. The logic checks out.

I remain thoroughly perplexed as to how engaging an e-locker could displace a significant amount of oil, much less the alarmingly copious amounts of oil that wound up oozing down my wheel well and splattering on the exhaust manifold during this event and its many recurrences in subsequent months, prior to me doing anything about it.

To be clear, I don't really know how the e-locker works, other than that there's an electromagnet exerting a force on an actuator in there, as opposed to compressed air. In my mind, it's just metal parts moving around in partially-filled tank of oil. Cursory googling suggests that actuation of the locker mechanism occurs in the horizontal plane. So, the volume of oil, and the volume of metal immersed in the oil, shouldn't ever change -- locked or not. Thus the oil level shouldn't ever change with an e-locker.

So sticking to this line of thought, then, why did my breather erupt with gear oil when I first used the e-locker? My theory is that the diff was on the verge of overflowing in the first place, and that engaging the locker resulted in a dynamic situation where the breather vent connection was getting "splashed" with oil as I drove around locked, even though the vent line connection was located above the nominal (stationary) oil level. Because gear oil is so thick, it takes a long time to drain back down the vent line, and in my case, the expanding air trapped in the diff as it warmed up was enough to push these plugs of splashed oil all the way up to the breather.

This, of course, is wild speculation. But it's plausible and somewhat coherently written. That's my job in a nutshell.

In any case, the mechanism of oil overflow is irrelevant to the critical message I'm seeking to convey here. If your stock diff breather gets soaked in gear oil, it will clog up and stop working as a breather. Ignoring this will cause gear oil to erupt form somewhere else, most likely your axle seals, but wherever this leak occurs, it will definitely be much harder to fix than replacing a breather. So don't ignore this problem. Perhaps your diff is overfilled -- drain it to the correct level and replace the breather, making sure the vent line is empty before resuming driving. Perhaps you should install fuel filter or catch can to allow erupting oil to pool and drain before it can clog the breather. I don't really know. But don't drive around with a clogged breather.

 

Great solution! I had the same situation going on, and I eventually spoke with the folks at ECGS. They assured me it's normal for the front diff to "sweat" gear oil out the breather with the regear and front locker installed. And that it will eventually go away. I haven't worried about it since, but I might try your mod as I'm running out of parts to throw at my truck

 

Love my eaton front e locker. I just engage it instead of bumping up obstacles and breaking stuff

 

No issues with my Eaton front e-locker. It does come in handy when needed. I’ve seen people have leak issues with air lockers but that can be a cause of a number of things. It would save you some money to get them on the same time you’re re-gearing.

 

I’ve seen ppl have electrical issues with e locker so to each his own

 

Something I forgot to mention about Eatons elockers (unless they changed it) is they use bearing ramps to actuate the locker itself. This is mostly complained about in Harrops which are the same thing but a lot of people for whatever reason do you like this because your locker momentarily disengages when you reverse and then drive forward. So even though its locked, a change in direction will unlock the locker.

there are a couple of Australians on Youtube with comparison videos between ARB and HArrop but Eaton makes Harrop and uses the same bearing method as far as I know, check that out to see if it bothers you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nYZo--7Xh4

 

Ive seen people have leaks in their air lockers.

 

If anything its been a plus for me, unbinds the damn steering for a second

 

Ya and its such a small amount of movement im not sure where the hate for it comes from. I see more non-owners complaining about the "idea" of it unlocking that owners actually using it.

 

What gear oil are you running? If you went with a real heavy one that could be why it’s pushing out the breather tube.

 

Yup still the same design, def pros and cons to the ramp design but at the end of the day it performs as you would expect a locker to perform

 

That user install error tbh. I wouldn’t trust anyone but east coast gear supply to do my lockers

 

Not to contradict @ZColorado, who makes excellent points regarding more-modern drivetrain technology. But for those of us with non-ATRAC trucks, the front locker makes a huge difference in challenging terrain. It's something I've used only rarely, because most of the time, stock 4x4 with rear locker will do the job. But on those rare occasions where I need a locked front axle, my front axle locks, and I like that very much. Sometimes it gets me through an obstacle, and other times it gets me into deeper trouble, but either way, it locks.

I just scrolled up to check, though, and apparently we're in the 3rd gen forum here. So presumably, everyone here has modern ATRAC, and might not benefit from a front locker as much as I did in my piece of shit 2nd gen. That said, I will forever cherish the smug feeling of intellectual if not moral superiority that comes with driving a non-computerized drivetrain in an older vehicle. (And please, pay no attention to my automatic transmission, ABS, and electronic throttle!)

But without doubt, improving technology will someday render mechanically locked drivetrains obsolete, even for extreme rock-crawling and off-road racing applications. The capabilities of instant bidirectional torque authority at each wheel, combined with millimeter-scale terrain and geology mapping via computer vision and increasingly complex sensor packages, all controlled by (and feeding data back to) real-time AI multiphysics algorithms to ensure optimal vehicle response, suggest that future stock minivans could be capable of outdriving today's ultras and trophy trucks in all regards except perhaps for endurance... and even then, without doubt, they'd absolutely dominate in terms of cost effectiveness. Assuming their software licenses are paid up of course.

This is the inevitable future for the present trajectory of vehicle technology. Just as the game of chess transitioned from being an ultimate frontier of raw intelligence, to just another board game where humans participate, but computer algorithms are necessary to detect if someone is cheating by using computer algorithms. Soon too will the pinnacle of vehicle performance become rooted in proprietary software rather than human skill, and you will have to pay for it constantly. Sure, future vehicles will be more capable and safer then ever. But the stage has already been set. We can't own software, we have to rent it.

So basically, the future is probably better, but it also completely sucks.

Sorry for the rant here, which to be clear isn't against ATRAC. ATRAC is part of the truck you buy, new or used, and you can own it, just like the rest of the truck. My alarm is at the inevitable future of vehicles becoming temporarily licensed rather than owned assets. I'm hoping that future legislation, or perhaps a global extinction event, could save us from this fate. But I'm not holding out much hope.

Hmmmm... sounds like a potential drawback. But from my experience, one of the primary benefits of the front locker is that I hardly ever need to reverse to regain footing, so long as I choose a good line in the first place. And thus far, even when reversing, this behavior hasn't emerged as a problem for me. Perhaps other lockers are fundamentally better, but at the same time, my Eaton/Harrop locker has churned both front wheels whenever needed (except for the, like, year-plus interval between installing it and actually wiring it up!)

Sweet, plus one for the e-locker!

Per ECGS recommendations I run "LUCAS DINO 85W140." Nothing beats the aroma of PURE DINO DNA when it erupts all over your exhaust manifold.

You're probably right though.

 

Someone here correct me if I'm wrong please or if this has changed. When I was doing the research for electric vs air the one point I could not move away from was how the electric locked. It had to be moving very slow or almost stopped, then that 1/2 turn of the wheel for it to lock. It seemed very similar to the stock electric locker. Versus the ARBs lock instantly even at high speeds, as long as you let off the gas it will lock while the drivetrain is spinning as long as its not under load. Admittedly, I have never locked anything at higher speeds, but I have locked while moving up and down obstacles. It might make huge difference, but something to take into account. I'm also in a sport so I don't have Atrac or a factory rear locker.

 

Not sure about engagement speed but I can say with personal experience that I had a buddy with an air locker engage his accidentally when he was trying to turn off/on lights on his switch pro and it engaged around 40mph and made a horrible noise and 4wd stopped working. Was able to get back to camp and disconnect battery to reset 4wd computer I guess and everything survived somehow. Not sure when a situation would require high speed locker engagement, the factory rear locker won’t engage anyways if you’re over a certain speed, even in 4LO. You have to be going less than 5 or 10mph iirc

as far as the e-locker engagement, it does require a partial turn of the tire before it engages vs instant engagement of air locker, as mentioned above. The Eaton Also disengages and Re-engages when you switch from forward to reverse and vice versa as the locking pin slides back down the ramp and back up the opposing side before Re-engaging. Some might see this as a pro or as a con, I see it as both. It’s nice not having to worry about not disengaging the locker when I have to back up a foot to turn my steering wheel to adjust my line. But also sucks if you are in a situation where a quarter or half tire rotation reduces ability to give her the beans immediately without harsh engagement

as far as the Eaton vs the stock e-locker, the design is completely different. The factory e locker uses a collar with a motor to engage and once it’s engaged it’s locked solid no matter if you’re going forward or reverse. The reason it takes a bit to engage is because the teeth within the collar have to mesh with the shaft before it can engage.

another thing to note comparing factory to Eaton is that the Eaton locker hardware/actuation is housed and completed internal to the actual differential chunk, whereas the factory lockers hardware/actuation is completed outside of the differential chunk, and a fork on one end of the diff is actually what slides the collar to engage the factory locker

 

In 2wd with an ADD truck? Terrible scenario. Giant mismatch of speeds in the locking mechanism. Not a good idea.

Doing that with the ADD already engaged and it is no problem.