The Dana Trac Loc is one of the worst limited slips out there... You must have had a good amount of weight in the back of the heep.. on a p/u they are scary unpredictible on snow and ice..... Let alone off camber on snow/ice/mud/dirt/earth....

flyg's comment is valid... they do the same crappy things when you dont want them to, espically on off camper of very slick situations..open is what you want.. You may loose traction, but you really dont want to loose lateral stability, which doesnt exist with a lunchbox or a LSD on off camber or slick stuff.

 

Well I did have an Unlimited. The extra 10 inches of wheelbase helped (versus the standard wheelbase Wrangler), and the Unlimited is about 250 pounds heavier, with all of the extra weight on the rear wheels.

Even while I was in Kentucky, driving around after the snow that came almost every night, I was surprised at how well my Wrangler did. And I had no winter weather experience before then.

About the only complaints I hear about the Trac Lok on the Jeep forums is when the clutches wear out and it doesn't work and needs rebuilt (pretty cheap and easy to do), or that it doesn't do as well as a locker in the more extreme stuff. I don't recall hearing about the Trac Lok causing problems on ice.

 

I have had trac locs in 2 rigs, and they were as worthless as they get.. The only time power went to both wheels was on snow/ice... on the trail is was an open diff..... ah the days when I was young and stupid....

 

For those of you that still think that an automatic locker affects handling the way it does because it is a spool most of the time, here is a description of how an automatic locker differentiates and how it affects handling in a turn:

"One more effect of lockers that hampers every day use is that they only drive the inside wheel on a turn, which can affect vehicle handling.

When driving the inside wheel, the vehicle tends to yaw from side to side slightly when negotiating a turn under power. When turning sharply while taking off from a stop, the inside wheel will tend to spin easily."

That is a quote from offroaders.com .

Despite how well the website describes how an automatic locker differentiates, the words "yaw from side to side slightly when negotiating a turn under power" isn't totally accurate.

Since the inside wheel on a locker equipped vehicle drives the vehicle during a turn under power, it tries to push the vehicle to the outside of the turn under power, and will try to pull the vehicle to the inside of the turn when the throttle is lifted.

So the "yaw from side to side" the website speaks of occurs when throttle is applied and lifted during a turn, not when just under power, and might be more than just "slightly".

But that website still describes automatic lockers more accurately than some others do.

Here is the link to the page: http://dpxmldsl.verizon.net/_1_21N7U...ferentials.htm

This link describes the way automatic lockers differentiate in the most accurate way I could find online (and I searched alot). Surprisingly, there is alot of misinformation even in websites that supposedly explain differential "facts".

Some so called "fact" websites say that lockers only differentiate while the throttle is lifted. This is not true for most automatic lockers in most circumstances.

It can be true for the Detroit Locker due to it's reverse angle cut teeth (although it still doesn't normally happen). But the Lock Right and it's clones, and the No Slip, have forward angle cut teeth, so it's very rarely true for those lockers. Either way, the spool effect tends to happen only on low traction surfaces (ice, for instance) where there is not enough traction to cause enough torque to allow differentiation.

Here's another thing, what I've actually experienced while experimenting:

Two things I have noticed since I have had my Tacoma is how it handles with the selectable rear locker locked in 2wd, (which would then act as a spool), and how the handling with the locker locked compares to an automatic locker in the rear of a vehicle (such as the Lock Right and No Slip in the rear of the '94 Mazda Navajo I had).

With the Tacoma rear manually locked like a spool (experimenting on pavement and dirt), it obviously tries to fight direction changes. The inside wheel tends to push, while the outside wheel tends to drag.
The action wasn't jerky like an automatic locker.

The Lock Right and the No Slip I had in the rear of my Navajo tried to push the vehicle to the outside of turn under power, and pull the vehicle to the inside of the turn with the throttle lifted while decelerating. In addition to this, mainly due to the extra backlash an automatic locker needs to function, the action tends to be jerky.

This behavior is due to the vehicle being pushed/pulled by the inside wheel, not to being locked like a spool like some seem to think.

The automatic lockers I have had never acted like a spool at all, but the selectable locker in my Tacoma, when locked, does act like a spool. I can definately tell the difference in the handling between the two.

So it's obvious that an automatic locker does differentiate at least most of the time, and doesn't act like a spool (except in rare circumstances that I personally haven't encountered).

 

GET A LOCKER, electric, air, you cant go wrong.