I've got about 150 miles on it now and the housing is dry as a bone and it's working perfectly so it seems to be a successful install. Today I took my wife and kids up in search of some deeper snow for a little afternoon sledding/picnic. Here are a few pics:
So far, I love it. While the above wasn't remotely a challenge, it was certainly enough to get a feel for the difference in traction. And boy do you feel a difference. You just really don't spin the tires anymore, relatively speaking. It just pulls. There were a few deeper spots where the road switches back in the timber and it had drifted over a bit (and where the guy who went up before us had some trouble) and it just drove through like nothing.
One of the things I was worried might be more difficult was turning around, which can often be a challenge on roads like that when there's snow. This too was easier. Though I didn't crank the wheel as sharply and was easy on the throttle, the added traction makes the whole thing easier--no worries that if you drop one wheel in the ditch too far you'll get stuck. There's no spinning one front and the ditch dictating which way the vehicle points as the front is dragged around, the front just pulls the way you point the tires with no drama. Getting the vehicle stuck would be so much more difficult you can do such things with less worry.
Had I continued up that road and gained 1000+ feet elevation I'm sure I would have run into a challenge eventually but with the wife and kids along it wasn't the time to push it. I may go up alone looking for deeper stuff sometime in the next couple of days (interested in a long drive north Fishsticks?).
So far I've been pleasantly surprised with the whole "difficult steering" issue. It's certainly there but not as bad as I had imagined. That road at lower elevation before the snow got deep was glare ice for a while so I got a good feel for how it reacts on that too. While if you use too much throttle (especially on ice, but on snow too) it does want to go straight, but if you're being reasonable with the throttle the front still grabs and steers well, even on ice.
I can't say there are no situations where it could be a problem, such as a steep icy sidehill or similar where you might rather have an open diff, but so far it doesn't look like it'll be much of an issue. Even on glare ice where I could easly spin all four really fast when I put my foot down, with moderate throttle it still turned fine. You do have to turn the wheel a bit farther and you do feel resistance to turning the wheel, but it'll go where you make it go. Now that's just at offroad/gravel road type speeds, not highway speeds. There was some ice on the highway going up there but I just left it in 2WD for that.
One of the bigger surprises was how easily the wheels will ratchet apart from each other when there's no torque on the front driveshaft. I was thinking once the disconnect is connected, the wheels would be locked together so hard that steering issues would be the same for Auto 4WD and 4HI on something like ice because there wouldn't be enough traction to ratchet the wheels apart.
Not so. They spin very freely when there's no torque. If you jack up the front and put it in Auto 4WD so the front disconnect is connected but there's no torque on the driveshaft, you can spin each front with your hands independently. The ratcheting action is easier to activate in the locker than it is to overcome the inertia of the other tire and make it spin. Very easy and more quiet than I expected. Of course when you put it in 4HI, the fronts are LOCKED together solid.
What this means is the steering in Auto 4WD is largely unaffected much of the time. I was assuming the days of using this mode on mixed condition city streets (where I have used it a lot and find it very helpful) would be over with this installed but I don't think that's the case. It seems to turn about as well as it does in 2WD on ice making it very drivable under light throttle. Now when you spin the rears and the front kicks in, it KICKS IN. It will jerk the wheel (trying to straighten it out) and your steering angle will change. But as mentioned above, it still seems to turn OK with the front locked as long as you know what to expect. But boy does it pull!
In 2WD you can't tell it's there. Not at all. The driver's front tire spins the driveshaft which simply freewheels I presume, the right front spins nothing due to the disconnect obviously, they both spin freely without any clicking. So unlike more aggressive diffs/lockers, etc, in the rear, there is no noticeable downside or change of any sort in daily driving in 2WD for this modification.
Those are my thoughts on it with the very limited experience I have with it so far, I'll update as I try more things with it.
)))