Hi AB156V6 I have to disagree with some points to an extent
I have no race experience but have done many track days in my road car with essentially the same type of clutch type diff Adie is talking about.
I also have had a chance to do a head to head comparison with a quaiffe diffed GTA (posted a thread with videos and telemetry a while back) so as an amateur I have a pretty good idea of the practical differences of these diffs as applied to a GTA.
My clutch-type diffed car is a doddle to drive on or off the track, with almost zero torque steer, btw torque steer is hugely reduced from standard
My wife can drive the car without noticing anything funny.
I don't need to twiddle with the diffs settings, but its nice to have the option if the diff was being serviced.
The people who sold me the diff just discussed what type of driving I would do and chose a setting for me - no technical knowledge was actually required on my part. My local mechanic would just need to install the diff as configured by the retailer who would have configured all the diffs internals appropriately.
I don't believe modern lsds have a fixed limited slip under all load conditions, I can clearly feel the gradually increasing lock as I apply smoothly power on corner exit. I suspect you are referring to the intial torque transfer?
As I undertand it the torque transfer then increases based on load determined by the difference in rotational velocity of the wheels up to a higher determined torque transfer setting.
Seems to work pretty well to me - I don't experience any tugging at the wheel and I have a lot more torque than standard.
Now if you did something silly like applied a lot of lock on a trailing throttle and then stamped on the gas while in the powerband you would feel sudden torque steer for sure - but you typically would never do this..
Ignoring long-term diff maintenance for the moment:
For day use I personally have found no real drawbacks, and for fast road use its hugely more precise on the road than the standard diff and much much *easier* to drive under full throttle on a bumpy road with.
In a head to head track test I did (I posted a thread with telemetry and video a while back) the clutch type diff appeared to be to significantly outperform the Quaife diff for track driving, at least as applied to the Quaiffe 2.5 v6 diff installed in a GTA.
Its true that the Quaife is more precise in terms of instant torque adjustment, but the modest torque bias ratio that was specified for the 156 2.5 V6 quaife diff meant that it was much easier to spin the wheels under really hard cornering than the clutch type diff.
Once the GTA's inside wheel became unloaded due to roll, the quaife diff just stopped working and the inside wheel spins up, ..in a situation where I could be on the gas harder much earlier with the clutch type diff.
I'm very happy with it, but yes the Quaife diff would be a fix and forget option and very suitable for road use especially since it is totally unobtrusive and even smoother in operation, mind you the Q2 diff sounds like a bit of a bargain!
BTW Adies price on clutch type diffs is very competitive too!
Especially since you would be dealing with somebody who has race knowledge of how to set them up.
Cheers,
TB