Curious to know if a 1993 300E is 1 wheel drive. I did a left foot brake/right foot acceleration tire smoking burnout the other day, and only the right rear tire spun. Is it always this way, or just under this situation?

FQ

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FAQ

W124
Sportline Swaybars
Bilstein HD Struts
16" E420 wheels

This is a feature of a differential final drive. All cars have a differential. This enables the driven wheels to rotate at different speeds while remaining powered by the engine. One of the flaws of the system is that more power is delivered to the faster turning wheel. Thus when one wheel spins, it gets all the power.

A limited slip differential (also known, mistakenly, as a locking dif) maintains a proportion of the power to the slower turning wheel. This is especially useful in slippery conditions such as off road, or with a powerful car. Many, though not all, Mercedes have a limited slip diff.

From the behaviour of your car, it doesn't have a limited slip diff.

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Cheers, Neil

Frank,

I happen to enjoy doing that every now and then as well. Without limited slip one wheel is usually the best you can hope for. Sometimes the left will spin, sometimes the right, and on rare occasions both will. It has a lot to do with road surface and how the weight of the vehicle is on the rear wheels.

If you want to do both I've had good luck spinning them on an upward grade. This seems to load both wheels just right, and also I've found that if you start off slow, like lots of brake and slowly feed the gas to it you will have better luck at getting both to ROAST!! By the way, my car is a 95 E320 that loves to burn tires too

Happy Roasting,

Dale

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Thanks guys, starting to make sense now. I just wanted to make sure i was in fact driving both wheels under normal conditions. My RR tire has much less tread than LR, accounting for pre-mature tire spin. I am sure road surface and weight transfer also play a role. Great picture Dale, i am going to do the same photo soon. I just got new wheels and tires,(from a 97 E420) so i will be lighting up the rears a few times in the meantime, and i will try to ease on the throttle slowly to initiate botht tires to break loose.
Later
FQ

__________________
FAQ

W124
Sportline Swaybars
Bilstein HD Struts
16" E420 wheels

Limited slip differentials and locking differentials are two different kinds of critters: the limited slip kind have clutch packs inside the differential with a certain amount of preload augmented by various mechanical tricks to increase the tension under load. These help a lot, but some of the cheaper designs, such as Ford's old Equa-Lok, will still slip a lot (and burn the little clutches out) if you try a burn out with one wheel on asphalt and one on gravel. Old GM Positraction was the best of the lot, I must admit.

The true lockers, like Porsche ZF differentials or the Detroit Locker I had installed on my old autocross '64 1/2 Mustang 35 years ago when it became clear that the Equa-Lok couldn't handle the task, use various ratcheting tricks or one way clutches (like SAAB freewheeling devices), and they really will transfer all the power to the tire with the traction, until something else breaks.

And then there are the Torsen type units, with funny little worm-gear tricks which I won't attempt to explain without pictorial capability.