straight newbie question, What is an LSD?

[TRD-CELICA-GT02]

What is an LSD and what does it do for our car?

[The Game]

Limited Slip Differential, it helps you get traction and put power to the ground!

[TRD StreetRacing]

check THIS (http://www.howstuffworks.com/differential1.htm) site out.....that's how i learn stuff......very easy to learn tooo

[Death_Adder]

More specifically...
Like most cars, our car comes from the factory with an open differential. With an open differential, when a driving wheel loses traction, power is transmitted to that wheel by a path of least resistance. With a limited slip differential (aka positraction), the power gets sent to the wheel with traction.

This is why with a car like the Celica, you can only lay down one stripe from burning rubber, but a Mustang can put two stripes down.

[chameleon]

The letters LSD stands for Limited Slip Differential.

If you have ever run on a track at school, you can use that to understand what a differential does. There are several different lanes on a track, and if you have ever had to run around the track, like running a timed mile for example, you will know that it is better to run on the inside lane of the track because the distance around it is a lot shorter than the outside lane.

Your car experiences the same thing whenever it makes a turn. When you turn your car, the wheel on the outside of the turn actually has to complete a greater distance than the inside wheel, so the outside wheel has to turn faster to compensate. This is what a differential does, it allows the drive wheels to turn at different speeds.

The are several different types of differentials. The Celica comes equiped with the most common type of differential, which is an open differential. With an open differential system, the differential just sends the most power to the wheel that has the least traction/resistance on it. So if you take a turn really fast with an open differential system, the weight transfer of the car will cause one side of the cars wheels to lose some traction, which results in the majority of the power that the engine is making to be transfered to that wheel, which makes it lose even more traction. You can tell that this is occuring because you will have one wheel squeeling around the corner. Also, when you launch your car from a stop, if one of the tires breaks loose and starts to spin, more and more power will be transfered to that wheel, while the wheel that actually does have traction just gets less and less power. Kind of a catch 22, huh? You can definately see the evidence of this when people try to show off with thier one wheel smokey burnouts, which only shows off that they have a performance limiting open differential. :chuckles:

An open differential is horribly, horribly, horribly limiting if you are performance orientated. A limited slip differential will cure all those problems. A limited slip differential will lock the wheels together when there is a loss in traction, which forces the power away from the wheel that is begining to slip, and transfers it to the wheel that still has traction. This means that can take corners faster and launch dramatically better. If you are serious about peformance, you really need an LSD in your car, everything about the way an open differentail operates is inherantly bad to the enthusiast. Get one now! :)

edit:
dang, three posts in before me, I need to type less, lol!

[TRD-CELICA-GT02]

THanks guys. Chameleon, thanks for a more elaborate explanation as well. Thanks a lot!