Hi
I want to increase the speed/fuel consumption of my S3 2.25 petrol 1982. I've been told I should replace the current diffs with 3.5's. I'm new to 4WD and have no idea what type/year of diffs I should be looking for. Can anyone help please
Before you get any further, you need to understand what you really want, and what affect people are proposing.
Standard Series diffs are 4.7:1, you can swap in a diff from an RR/early Disco and 10 spline 90/110's. These have a ratio of 3.54:1, so a taller geared diff.
What this will do is offer a higher terminal speed in gear, i.e. more mph per 1000rpm. So you'll get lower cruising rpms.
However, as the final drive gears are taller, it will affect performance, so acceleration is likely to be slightly blunted as will your low speed off road crawl speed.
So while in theory it will allow you to either cruise at the same speed with lower rpms, or at a higher mph at the same rpms, you need to consider you might have to drive it harder to make it go.
Some really like this change to the Series, but I think you'd be better off making sure you are unhappy with the current final drive ratio before changing it. It won't double your mpg and if you live in hilly area's or don't do much high speed work in it, then you may find it's worse.
Changing tyre size might have a more suitable affect, or maybe make such a swap less appealing.