Torsen talk ... straight from the author's mouth!

[audidudi@mindspring.com (Jeffrey J. Goggin)]

This afternoon, I spent 30 minutes on the telephone with the author of the
paper that I posted at my web site -- BTW, his last name is pronounced
"Sho-Sho-leck" -- and learned quite a bit about Torsen diffs, which he
refers to as a "dumb, gear-jamming, frictional device" ... he also said he
doesn't like limited-slip diffs in general, which I thought was quite
surpising, all things considered.

I took extensive notes during our conversation and he promised to call me
back with the names and numbers for some other people he thought could
provide some information about how to "soften" their torque-dividing
characteritics.  He also said there're only about six people left in the
Torsen department -- he was a contract engineer, not an employee -- and that
it's his understanding that Toyota has plans to use a Torsen center diff in
some of their upcoming car and SUV designs.  Interesting...

In time, I will prepare a more detailed post concerning my findings but for
now, suffice it to say that he confirmed *everything* that Scott Justusson
(as well as myself and many others) have been postulating: Yes, he said,
it's definitely possible for a Torsen diff to be fooled by slip-angle
differences and in fact, B-L rejected it for use in the Land-Rover for that
reason.  He also said the only performance aspect he could remember Audi's
engineers being interested in was making sure the car would climb a hill
with two wheels on the road and two wheels off, which the Torsen passed with
flying colors ... he further added that at least one of the factory's racers
(he didn't remember who) refused to run a Torsen because they found the car
too difficult to drive.  Hmmm...

As you can tell, this proved to be a very interesting and englightening
conversation and I will post back with a more detailed report as time
permits later this weekend...  :^)
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   / |      _| o    | \       _| o  Jeffrey Goggin
  /__| | | / | | __ |  | | | / | |  audidudi@mindspring.com
 /   | |_| \_| |    |_/  |_| \_| |  http://www.mindspring.com/~audidudi/
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