Plated Diff troubles
 

Hello all.
In the proces of fitting my plated diff I have run across a problem.
I have a 4.11 diff myself, the plated one is from a WRX with 3.54 gearing.
So I have to change over the diffs themselves, so the plated diff gets the 4.11 Crown and pinion.
The old diff came apart fine, the trouble is with the WRX diff.

The original diff has holes in which you slide the axles, the WRX diff has male axle stubs (like the front on a classic).Because of this the diff can't come out of the housing.

Looking into the end of each stud (hollow) I see a hex/torx sitting there, and after some quick reseach I found out I have to unbolt these,so the male axle stubs can be removed.
However, they are torqued to about gazillion, as I have snapped 2 sockets already, so now I am doubting the method.

Does this seem normal that a 7mm or thereabout hex is stuck so fast that tools are snapping in 2, or was the method I found just incorrect,and is there another way???

We have only ever seen the bolt in stub shafts on early Legacy diffs. It sounds as if someone has managed to do a diff centre swap in the past using Legacy parts. OR it isn't a WRX diff it is a Legacy diff.

I don't think it will be easy to undo the hex's and even if you do, I am not certain that your original axles will fit in place of the bolted ones anyway.

It is a VERY long time since we have seen that old bolt in set up.

Serious Good Luck with that. David APi

After some more calls it was actually a piece of cake.
Just had to use a E10 1/4 socket with soem adapters on my 1/2 airgun.
They came loose remarkably easy.

It is indeed a Legacy plated diff, with new clutch and spring plates fitted.
I also had some unknown axles with the diff, with a female joint (like the front gearbox)

However, the axles turned out to be some expensive custom made thicker ones (about 4mm larger diameter, came from a 500+hp wrx)so instead of using my axles with the female joints I just used the complete WRX axles.

I have adjustable airms at the back, so I could adjust them for the wider track a GD has compared to a GC8.

Now I just need to mount a new coolant header tank, and map the Syvecs.
Then it's MOT time, and I can check out what difference the diff makes.
I set the preload to about 80nm, as a starting point.
I have thicker clutch and spring plates to go up to 200+nm, but that seemed a bit too much.