Thought I had better run this one past the people with knowledge on such things before I jump to conclusions...

I was just out about about and happened to give it a fair bit of curry around a corner.. the car torque steered like mad, putting power to both wheels randomly, and then CLUNK CLUNK.. then every hundred meters CLUNK..

on each clunk, you can feel it through the whole car, and there is a lot of resistance on the drivetrain. It happens more when trying to turn.

From what we can work out.. it is only happening when the diff tries to engage the left wheel, at 1 point driving it home, the car started pulling heavily to the right.

Does this sound like a half rooted diff? Its the only thing I could really put such symptoms down to. :\

Yep, Sounds like you dropped a tooth on the spider gear. Dont drive it or you will start to do damage to the Box if you havent already.. Diff teeth get caught in your normal gears and start destroying the whole box. Time for a Quaife. i recon..:)

Box swap, revert to stock and sell car unfortunately. :( Can't afford to keep fixing crap if I plan on getting anywhere.

Hahahaha. Story of my life..:P Yeah when you abuse the standard diff they fail. I did it 3 times. This Quaife has been in since the Big Engine and been abused plenty with double the power and 2 years later still holding up.

Very impressive! If I could source 1 already in a box for a reasonable price I might keep the car but fat chance of that.

i have a spare diff here. Out of an auto matic, but so long as you havent destroyed your crown wheel, you just have to swap them over.

I've actually got a 5 speed auto sitting in my garage with a dead wave spring... I didnt realise they were same same. I'll see how I go, cheers mate!

No, only the 4 sp auto centre can be used

Oh I see... well.. I've got one of them here too :P However it is in a TL box with 36k km on it, it would be a shame to junk it for its diff.

It's cheaper to buy another box from the wreckers and just bolt it in, than to pull apart a standard one to fix the diff. If you were going LSD, it'd be a different story, but even a low kms manual box from a late model is only a couple hundred $.

And yeah, you've broken the diff. Don't drive it too much, although on all of the occasions my diffs went bang the actual gearbox itself was always fine, including 1 time when i drove home and then to the shop on a diff that, when drained, was more metal than oil.