AMG’s Sporty Lightweight Compact gets a Wavetrac LSD Upgrade

Equipped with a large displacement V8, over 355hp and an open differential, the SLK55 AMG is another AMG which can really benefit from a Wavetrac LSD upgrade. 

The problem with the standard open differential is that once traction is lost drive torque (also commonly called power) is sent to that wheel which is now freely spinning. Something easily done when driving an AMG car in the manor to which it was designed for. 

The way to solve this is to install a Limited Slip Differential (LSD). Although, when looking at a performance LSD there are many and it can often be confusing to chose the right one for your AMG. 

Conventionally there were two options, on the one hand is a plate style locking LSD and an Automatic Torque Biasing (ATB) LSD. The downsides of the plate style locking LSD is that the Noise, Vibration and Harshness is typically quite high and they need to be serviced to maintain performance two key aspects which make them unsuitable for a road car application. 

On the other hand there is the ATB LSD, these were typically installed on road cars as they have low NVH and do not need to be serviced as regularly to maintain performance however, designs like the Quaife and others like it have one major drawback; loss of drive when axle load is lost. This is one reason why you may install a locking plate style LSD over an ATB LSD. 

Whilst “lost axle load” sounds complicated, it really isn’t. This can happen in normal road scenarios such as wheel slip, suspension unloading (when you corner heavily and one side of the suspension becomes unloaded or go over a hill crest) and in extreme circumstances wheel lift. 

To solve this issue the Wavetrac ATB LSD was invented. It has a patented design feature which cure this problem which is dubbed the “wave-hub”. The Wave Hub adds load to the differential when it is lost, this allows the Wavetrac ATB LSD to continue to work in situations whereby the Quaife and similarly designed differentials would perform like a standard open differential. To learn more about the Wavetrac, take a look here