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Which Lockers to go with?

az.scrambler

az.scrambler

Basic User
City
Peoria
State
AZ
I'd like your opinion on which lockers to go with for my daily driving 81 body 82 chassis scrambler? I was initially thinking ARB's in both, but am starting to lean Detroit up front and ARB in the rear. Thanks for the help.
 
az.scrambler said:
I'd like your opinion on which lockers to go with for my daily driving 81 body 82 chassis scrambler? I was initially thinking ARB's in both, but am starting to lean Detroit up front and ARB in the rear. Thanks for the help.
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Detroit in the front will make it tough to turn (unless you hop out and unlock a hub).
Selectables are the best option if your wallet can afford them.

For daily driver duty.....detroit true-trac limited slip up front would be my choice.
 
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Would you do true-trac up front and ARB in the rear, or ARB's in both? I don't have deep pockets. I can swing the ARB's. I don't know anything about the selectable hubs you mentioned. I only have experience with Loc-rights. I was very happy with them, but thought the ARB's would be better. ???
 
If you can swing ARB's for the front and the rear, do it. Ected's are a cheaper way to accomplish the same thing, although Ecteds are a limited slip in the unlocked position, whereas ARB's are open in the unlocked position. I put Ecteds in mine, but it's a ways from running so I can't comment.

Selectables was in referance to lockers, not hubs. Any locker that is manually controlled is a selectable- ARB, Ox, Ected, ELocker...
 
im a huge fan of detroit in the rear and either a tight powerlock or a tru-trac in the front or if money allows, an ARB. detroit of come a long way and are very smooth on the street when in the rear. i have one in my CJ5 and wouldnt trade it for anything. the only problem with a selectable is that its just one more thing that can fail since it has a switch.
 
I'm running ARB's front and rear. I really like the ability to turn them on and off as I choose. I do use it in the snow and the Detroit I had on another rig was a disaster in snow and ice conditions. A nice thing about ARB's is that a great deal of trail users use these and parts are plentiful.
 
After running a Detroit in the rear and an Aussie Locker in the front of my daily driver/trail rig CJ-7 for years, I switched to driving my 05 Rubicon as a daily driver with selectable lockers front and back, and decided to run Ox Lockers front and back in my current Scrambler build.

I like the Ox's more then the ARB's due to a lack of air lines, switches, compressors, etc. The Ox's use a steel cable to manually lock and unlock them, fewer parts to fail vs an ARB or ECT's.

The open diff function when unlocked also puts less stress on axle shafts and other powertrain components vs the full time auto locking diffs.

The only bad thing about selectables is the $$ up front, but I think the $$ is worth it for a dual use Jeep.

Just my :twocents: :cheers:
 
The TrueTrac is a limited slip diff. If you put a regular Detroit Locker up front...it will be difficult if not impossible to steer with even the slightest application of skinny pedal. The TrueTrac never locks up 100%...only like 90%...and it uses gears..not clutches...so basicly bulletproof, and it will allow you to steer because it will allow the tires to turn at different rates...a Detroit wont...More power applied to a Detroit = more lock up.

If you can swing ARB's....do it to it!
Just dont forget you will also need 1 piece axles for the rear, and it would be a perfect time to upgrade to disks in th rear ( see my answer to your other post)
 
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if it is truly a daily driver..and u are only going to use it for mild wheeling....i would not lock either end you would be amazed where a stock rig with decent tires will go...just my opinion...i did not lock mine up till i went 1 tons and 42's
 
I've had ARB's for 5+ years and been quite satisfied. In that time I've only had a minor glitch with a seal in the ARB compressor, that was easily fixed. ARB sent me the o-ring at no charge. They're great on trails or for road mannors.
 
Awesome comments/advice from everybody. Thank you very much for your help. It is amazing where a stock Jeep will go. I just did a fairly rough trail up the back side of a town called Crown King and I only had to build one small leg of a road/ledge up to get through it. The Willy's had to be towed up and the Extreme rig had no problem until he snapped a stabilizer bar while snatching the Willy's.

I now have some homework to do, budgets to consider and trails to explore. Thanks again for the help.
 
I've had lockrites front and rear for 6 years now. I just recently switched to an ected in the rear, but haven't got but about 2 miles on it so far so I can't really comment yet on it as an option. I need to get doors back on the jeep to drive it in winter. My biggest complaint was that I would get a "shockwave" thru the drivetrain that caused a little noise and hopping motion when coasting around the corners if it was in gear, even if the clutch was pushed. I either had to pull it out of gear on corners, or give it a little gas which tends to speed along the tire wear. Supposedly this type of affect can happen with a ratchet type locker in a lightweight vehicle with manual tranny. I picked up a 2nd jeep for offroad use so I wanted this one to be more DD friendly and swapped it in while doing axle work. I think a selectable in the rear is good for covering most driving/wheeling conditions, and the front depends on whether you need 4wd for street driving in snow/ice. Go selectable if you plan on ice driving.
:twocents:
 
If you are 90% street I would suggest TruTrac's. They are the perfect solution for bad conditions on the street. They work just fine offroad for light trail use. I have them in my CJ8 and have found them to work fine unless you start trying to go over larger rocks where one wheel may want to lift off the ground. At that time it will become an open differential. I will say that I am switching to ARB's because I intend to tackle some of the rougher trails. I can say that the TruTrac's haven't failed me yet.
 
Unless selectables front/rear are in your budget then selectable rear, lunchbox (Aussie/Lockrite/etc) front with a twin stick setup for the tcase. That's assuming you're not going huge on tires.

The comment on turning issues offroad with a full locker in front is true, but rather than requiring a selectable, you can do a $100 or less twin stick setup on the tcase so you can drop into 2LO where the front is free and that will allow even a Detroit (what I run) to unlock in most situations and allow you to get your radius back. If it's REALLY slippery, it will still be an issue, but I've always thought that at that point, anything will be hard to turn just from lack of traction and the length of the Scrambler.

I didn't see the twin stick solution mentioned anywhere, needed to throw it out there for consideration.

There is an issue with this setup of on road 4HI driving if you do lots of bad weather, on-road, 4 wheel drive, then, a selectable is the only real option. You'll get push with any kind of lunchbox or full locker at that point.
 
I went threw the same dilemma with the axles and lockers.

I went with a setup that Bigwalton turned me to.

My cj8 is a DD light trail truck. I set the drive train up like this.
Stock 258 with 4 speed t4. ( want to replace t4 to a t176 )
Front Dana 30 with lock-right limited slip 322.00
Rear AMC 20 with new axles and lock-right locker 340.00
Twin stick from JB custom 99.00 that is with a boot.

The size of tire I'm running are 33x12.5 on stock 15in rims.
This set up should get a guy on most trails and not take away the reliability of driving it every day. The set up was cheap the lock-rights are truly DIY in the garage.

I'm the kind of guy that you get what you pay for. So the cheap cost of the lock-right i was leery of them. I got the first one and the machine work is first rate and simple in stall.

Wrench on and have fun with your build
 
Randyzzz said:
If you can swing ARB's for the front and the rear, do it.
Click to expand...

X2, I have ARB's front and rear. Obviously cost is an issue going this route, but you can't do better for a trail/expo rig than ARB. 99% of the time you don't need a front locker anyway so having it selectable is a huge boost.

If it's a buggy/trailer rig on huge tires, then maybe a spool type, but that's not what I have exp. with.
 
I run Detroits in a few of my Jeeps and have had no issues what so ever with them. The do handle a little differently than a vehicle with open diff's on the highway but nothing that isn't to be expected. I wanted to run an Ox locker in the rear of my '85 CJ8 but Ox doesn't make a selectable locker for the dana 70; I even contacted them directly to see if there was any plans to build a locker for the dana 70 but that was a no go.

I thought about going with an ARB but there are just to many variables to go wrong (compressor failure, line break, etc) for me to go with one, IMO. I have had several issues with compressors failing in the past so I am a little paranoid. That is why I always go back to the detroit locker; it has been around for ever, its a simple design that has very few things to go wrong with it or fail, and it is tried and true. Plain and simple, they just work extremely well; thats what keeps me going back to Detroits!

I really don't think you could go wrong with a detroit in the front and an Ox or ARB in the rear though for a DD!
 
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