Taco2Cruiser
Crazy American Off Road
This is more of a “learn with me” than me asking for help. As some of you, I like to real world test just about everything, so I’m going to change how I talk about stuff, and try it this way instead. Make it less about me or theory of products, and more about actual results.
Air Lockers. I think they are awesome. I wheel in very technical terrain and I want a full spool when I do that. I have not found another selectable locker that allows for spool like lock up without running cable. So that’s what works for me.
First 30,000 miles of service was flawless, then one day, I found a puddle of gear oil on the floor under where my compressor was mounted.
I have personally owned nine of them, and this is my first issue with one of them. The third member design of the Toyota 9.5” when an air locker is fitted does make it to where, sometimes, gear oil can be pumped up the air line and out of the solenoids mounted off the compressor (I could go into why, but I’ll save that for later). The Toyota 9” clamshell can pump oil because of where the breather hose is in relation to where the seal housing mounts.
Then you get this.
Now please, this is where the testing starts. I will pressure test these diffs. I’ll replace oil rings and o-rings. I already have zero back pressure breathers. But I figured, “let’s try something else first.”
More background technical info that you should read to understand the theory here. The 200 series gets some awesome differential breathers. They let air out (from heat creating pressure build up), but they don’t let anything in. So no, you don’t need the replace your breathers with extended ones. The factory ones actually don’t even release pressure till about 5 psi. But air locker lines have zero back pressure. So with air lockers, you can, sometimes, create a situation where the pressure needs to go somewhere, and it’s going to take the path of least resistance. Which is the air locker line, and that line happens to be sitting in gear oil, so it’s going to push oil up.
Now I have the ARB breather kit, but that didn’t solve the issue. Which brings me to the purge valve.
So this little thing is designed to:
1) not let anything travel back up the line
2) release the pressure blowoff somewhere other than the compressor solenoids when unlocking
3) create 3-4 psi of back pressure. So that way, pressure will want to go up through the diff breather (only with free flowing breather like ARBs)
4) give you a button you can press to blast any funk out of the lines without having to unscrew air lines
So I found a place that I liked to mount this little guy. I welded up some aluminum and created a solid mounting surface that screwed into an existing captive nut. Then you connect the lines. Side note, you “can zip tie this thing down.” But the purge button is incredibly stiff. I have some pretty strong hands, but damn, it takes both of my thumbs to depress the button when charged. So I was very happy that I made a solid mounting design, but you can do whatever work for you.
Will this thing work? Oh I don’t know, but I’m going to pull my (regularly) 8,000 lbs buggy and trailer this weekend so we’ll see. I have not done anything else at this time.
After this test of a month or so, I’ll still pull the diff and replace the stuff I mentioned earlier and check backlash etc. But for now...
This is simply a test.
Now to mount the front purge valve... somewhere.
Air Lockers. I think they are awesome. I wheel in very technical terrain and I want a full spool when I do that. I have not found another selectable locker that allows for spool like lock up without running cable. So that’s what works for me.
First 30,000 miles of service was flawless, then one day, I found a puddle of gear oil on the floor under where my compressor was mounted.
I have personally owned nine of them, and this is my first issue with one of them. The third member design of the Toyota 9.5” when an air locker is fitted does make it to where, sometimes, gear oil can be pumped up the air line and out of the solenoids mounted off the compressor (I could go into why, but I’ll save that for later). The Toyota 9” clamshell can pump oil because of where the breather hose is in relation to where the seal housing mounts.
Then you get this.
Now please, this is where the testing starts. I will pressure test these diffs. I’ll replace oil rings and o-rings. I already have zero back pressure breathers. But I figured, “let’s try something else first.”
More background technical info that you should read to understand the theory here. The 200 series gets some awesome differential breathers. They let air out (from heat creating pressure build up), but they don’t let anything in. So no, you don’t need the replace your breathers with extended ones. The factory ones actually don’t even release pressure till about 5 psi. But air locker lines have zero back pressure. So with air lockers, you can, sometimes, create a situation where the pressure needs to go somewhere, and it’s going to take the path of least resistance. Which is the air locker line, and that line happens to be sitting in gear oil, so it’s going to push oil up.
Now I have the ARB breather kit, but that didn’t solve the issue. Which brings me to the purge valve.
So this little thing is designed to:
1) not let anything travel back up the line
2) release the pressure blowoff somewhere other than the compressor solenoids when unlocking
3) create 3-4 psi of back pressure. So that way, pressure will want to go up through the diff breather (only with free flowing breather like ARBs)
4) give you a button you can press to blast any funk out of the lines without having to unscrew air lines
So I found a place that I liked to mount this little guy. I welded up some aluminum and created a solid mounting surface that screwed into an existing captive nut. Then you connect the lines. Side note, you “can zip tie this thing down.” But the purge button is incredibly stiff. I have some pretty strong hands, but damn, it takes both of my thumbs to depress the button when charged. So I was very happy that I made a solid mounting design, but you can do whatever work for you.
Will this thing work? Oh I don’t know, but I’m going to pull my (regularly) 8,000 lbs buggy and trailer this weekend so we’ll see. I have not done anything else at this time.
After this test of a month or so, I’ll still pull the diff and replace the stuff I mentioned earlier and check backlash etc. But for now...
This is simply a test.
Now to mount the front purge valve... somewhere.
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