Funny this talk about ARB's leaking should pop up today. I was on the phone with Chase from ECGS for about 20 minutes today. For those that haven't heard it I'll go into the back story.
Nine months ago my almost new ARB RD132, built by ECGS, started to cycle the compressor every 10 seconds. I called ECGS and they sent me a new seal housing kit. Chase pretty much new right away that wasn't my issue though. During our talk he informed me that they had many ARBs coming back that had bad bonded seals. It's internal to the locker and not something most guys can swap out.
I got the new o-rings out of the kit a few days later and pulled my diff. After swapping the o-rings and re-installing it was the same. Cycling every 10 seconds max. I called ECGS and they told me to just send it in. It was summer and wheeling season was just picking up so I tried a plan B. After asking Chase what material the bonded seal was made from, which is a polymer, I decided to just dump some ATP-205 Seal Rejuvinator in the diff.
I put in about 2oz and drove around for a while. After hitting the locker a few times the cycle rate started to slow. Fast forward 2 weeks and the cycle rate went back to normal. WTF? This shit worked.
Fast forward to about 2 months ago when my front RD90 started doing the exact same thing. Actually it was worse. The locker still locked but the cycle rate was constant. Fuck me. I got back on the phone with Chase. He told me to pull it and they'd fix it. I told him I had another idea and if it worked again I'd call him back. Yep. 2oz of APT-205 went in the front diff.
Within days it got better. A couple weeks ago I went on a wheeling trip with
@Hank. We hit some snow. Then we hit some more. To make progress I needed both lockers engaged. I was dual locked for a very long time and my compressor only cycled every 5-8 minutes. I can totally live with that. In my mind my "fix" has proven to work.
I called Chase today to inform him of this. He was stoked but insisted that any time I want to have them rebuilt to let him know. During our conversation he let me know that they just got revision 3 of the bonded seal from ARB about a month ago. It seems that even the bonded seals they replaced with ARB's rev 2 seal still had issues. ARB redid the seal and this time they promise it's gonna be good.
So, that's what's going on with ARB lockers. It's not a set-up issue. At least not the one's ECGS are seeing. It's a bad bonded seal that breaks down with heat. That's also why they all pass a bench test and work great when first installed. After the diff heats up the seal starts to deform and looses seal with the housing. As far as ECGS goes, they do 75% of ARBs US sales. I trust them to know what's up. lol
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