A week ago I had a Quaife LSD installed in my 2013 MCS. I decided to get the Quaife due to my plans to autocross the car significantly. I autocrossed it once last year and came away deciding I very much needed an LSD. Due to the turbo lag, it was difficult to control inside wheel spin coming out of the corners. The option was to go slow through the corner but then have to wait for the turbo to spool after the corner was done.

So, one week in with the Quaife, I love it! I am astounded at how much more power one can put down coming out of a corner without lighting up a tire. It has transformed the car from one that likes to under steer to a neutral to more over steer happy setup. The smoothness of operation is very impressive, one doesn't notice the LSD effects in normal driving, and when you do start to get aggressive, the whole operation is very smooth, never a jerk or clunk. This is quite different than the e39 M5 I had with it's factory LSD where in tight low speed corners the rear end let you know it had an LSD by chirping the tires.

It should be noted, the Quaife is not a full locking setup, so if you do lift a tire it still acts a bit like an open diff, but not quite as extreme as the regular open diff would be.

I am excited to try it out in the autocrosses this year. Unfortunately the last major snow of the year is gone so it looks like I won't get to see its winter performance until next year. There is little doubt though that it wouldn't help tremendously in the snow.

 

Nice, did you have this installed at a shop, and if so how much did they charge?

 

Glad you like it so much. We install them all the time as they are the best and most reliable. And as you noted for the street car it isn't harsh making it even better.

 

The differential cost me $780 shipped from England. I also spent $61 on the tapered roller bearings that go on either side of it instead of reusing the old ones.
I had a local small town transmission shop put it in. They charged $1300 for labor and $135 for replacement BMW transmission fluid. Total install + tax was $1470.

There isn't any place around where I live that really works on Minis, several places I contacted no quoted me because they had never worked on one. They could tell it was going to be very labor intensive. The shop I went with said they once worked on an automatic R53 so that was good enough for me, even though I have a manual R56. They were very good, did a phenomenal job, it took them 2.5 days to do it all.

 

went the same way with the quaife from uk (1320.co.uk), has been trouble free for the past few miles ~5k. I havent noticed any additional noise, my car will still break both tires loose through corners but that is trying to be solved otherwise.
I ordered SKF bearings through ECS but one showed up wrong, was in kind of a bind since car was to be dropped off so i ordered Timken set through amazon prime, less than $10/pair

 

Interesting. I ordered a pair of SKF bearings through Way a couple years ago and
one arrived with a problem and had to scramble for another. As Jerry Seinfeld would
say "What's up with the SKF bearings? ... "

 

Hmm, I ordered the SKF bearings from ECS tuning and got exactly what I needed. No problems at all.

 

Today I really got a flavor as to how much the Quaife LSD helps in low traction situations. The road was damp from a light mist that was falling. I hit the last turn into work this morning at a good clip of speed. Instead of understeering with an inside wheel spinning furiously, I got an aggressive pull out of the turn with both wheels yanking the car in the direction of desired travel. I had the throttle pinned in 2ND gear doing about 30mph. The traction control didn't intervene and the car launched out of the turn ready for more action.

I am officially stoked for this year's autocross season to start in two months.

 

wasnt trying to take a jab at ECS they were more than willing to remedy the situation. at the moment i think they were a few days out from getting another one to me. one of the two bearings they sent, the box had a few different labels piled on top of each other, it happens. reminded me I still have them too, need to see if i can return them still been a few months tho

 

Looking forward to hearing your feedback. Planning on doing some autocrossing this summer in my JCW....it has the EDLC...I've heard that the Quaife is orders of magnitude better....