Fozzy locker or welded spiders

I'm gonna do FearlessFront's way. As long as you clean your gears nice and good before welding, make sure everything is lined up, and after welding you make sure to clean up all the slag, you will be fine.

I have welded 2 by welding the gears to shafts and gears to pins and have not had a problem FearlessFronts method

good to hear.

blanket80 wrote:

I have welded spiders before in my Dynamark and had great success. Although, I recently learned about the fozzy locker. Now the question is what style should I do to my new project... The choices are Fozzy locker, welding spiders together, or fearlessfronts weld the gears to the pin style.
Commets, Sugestions??..

Fozzy Locker


Traditional Welded Gears


Fearlessfronts way


What do you guys think?

what is a fozzy locker

briggs 123 wrote:

blanket80 wrote:

I have welded spiders before in my Dynamark and had great success. Although, I recently learned about the fozzy locker. Now the question is what style should I do to my new project... The choices are Fozzy locker, welding spiders together, or fearlessfronts weld the gears to the pin style.
Commets, Sugestions??..

Fozzy Locker


Traditional Welded Gears


Fearlessfronts way


What do you guys think?

what is a fozzy locker

The first picture, with one tooth on each side left unwelded to, a quick and easier way(in my opinion) to lock a transaxle.

Where can I buy a Fozzy Locker??? Sounds easier than welding.

avrappy wrote:

Where can I buy a Fozzy Locker??? Sounds easier than welding.

i am pretty sure you have to weld it up your self(weld the other teeth up on the gears), i have a set of gears that i wanted to try them to but ive never brought them out and welded them up yet, which reminds me about going out and actually doing it... The bad thing about going with the Fozzy locker is that your going to have play in the rear end.

avrappy wrote:

Where can I buy a Fozzy Locker??? Sounds easier than welding.

Probably have to get them custom made, im pretty sure nobody actually makes them for tractors. WOuldnt be hard to make one yourself though, all you are is filling in gaps in the gear so it cant turn. But like Wildy said, youll have some play.

i just welded up some gears i had from a Peerless transaxle i had sitting in the scrap pile(the transaxle casing was cracked and completely useless unless you had another casing).


They aren't ground down yet, i will do that sometime later when i need them or want to use them for a lawn tractor. if you are going to do it clean the teeth you didn't weld up(clean the slag, its not a good idea because it will damage other parts inside the transaxle) and make sure everything fits right when you put it back in or you might have problems later on.

Id be aiming for using the fozzy gears over welding everything solid - least it can be reversed easily enough.

Only sure fire way to cure any movement is to mount a straight axle thru the trans.

Using a fozzy locker is the way to go over Lincoln-locking the diff IMO. Depending on the transaxle you can simply add 2 more spider gears to effectively lock the differential.
...from my Peerless 900

AcreFarm wrote:

Using a fozzy locker is the way to go over Lincoln-locking the diff IMO. Depending on the transaxle you can simply add 2 more spider gears to effectively lock the differential.
...from my Peerless 900

OMG i have to try that next time my trans is apart a locker with no welding .

I think that differential was made for that. I know my bull gears are completely milled and wouldnt support extra gears.

No welding. Maybe some grinding, depending on what you've got. You will need to have an identical set of spiders...gears from other transaxles (Foote, DANA/Spicer, etc. won't work).
It's also easily reversible if you want to go back to an open diff.

Doug Fackler wrote:

I think that differential was made for that. I know my bull gears are completely milled and wouldnt support extra gears.

That is a factory ring & spider gear-set from a Peerless 900, with 2 spiders added to it. I had to grind the flat side of the 2 additional gears just a bit to make them fit into the ring gear

** edit**
This will work with some (820, 900, 910, 915, 920, 930, 940 series) Peerless transaxles, other manufacturers & Peerless models are a different story.

A strong spring on the shaft between the two spiders would make a cheap posi.

Used to do it on Ford 9" diffs to help wheelspin

Yeah i think a Solid axle through the entire setup would be the best.
Wouldn't a strong spring be more like a Limited-Slip Differential?

Ooh yeah got bored and ground down the gear.

i put a thin coating of grease over everything so it doesn't rust as easily while it isn't in the tractor

W1ldyOvvnZ wrote:

Yeah i think a Solid axle through the entire setup would be the best.
Wouldn't a strong spring be more like a Limited-Slip Differential?

Thats exactly what it is,

It depends what you want.

sometimes its desirable to have a little more control steering, but when not steering have a fairly solid forward drive.

It would also maximize traction in a front diff.

Chopperhed wrote:

Thats exactly what it is,

It depends what you want.

sometimes its desirable to have a little more control steering, but when not steering have a fairly solid forward drive.

It would also maximize traction in a front diff.

That would be nice to have, i might add that into a lawn tractor sometime, how strong of a spring did you use? i was thing of using a valve spring from a car engine but i dont know one that is long enough.

I think a limited slip would work great for me i am going to try this one day. How large / strong of a spring would i need.

i was thinking it would be better on the transaxle and less stress too if you drove on hard packed roads or pavement alot compared to a locked transaxle.

W1ldyOvvnZ wrote:

i was thinking it would be better on the transaxle and less stress too if you drove on hard packed roads or pavement alot compared to a locked transaxle.

Exactly I go up and down my street alot so this would be good also I dont want to loos my turning radius .

It will take some trial and error. I only remember this from 20 some years ago in a Hot Rod magazine for 9" ford diffs.


The engineering is sound. We just need to figure out the details.

Depending on the length required and shaft size etc. the possibilities are immense.

Might even be able to incorporate a clutch pad setup from an ATV too. Currently working on a belleville spring setup for a surpluss MTD fnr transaxle. The yamagha big bears had a posi front diff with small cluth plates on the spiders.

It boils down to adding friction between the spiders while not limiting the spiders from performing their function.

I have a peerless 600-612A in my LT75. It looks like a good candidate as well

I would use 2 thrust washers outboard on the spiders to keep the lash to a minimum, then you could use a valvle spring with washer spacers to adjust tension. I think the hardest part would be compressing everything to get it installed. I would guess that to be affective, you need a fair amout of pressure. Much more than being able to compress by hand. I may have to experiment with this myself, being able to turn short with traction sounds like a great idea. The transaxle case may live a little longer, without the strains of a locked diff trying to turn sharp regularly.

Chopperhed so you never have tried it on a lawn tractor transaxle before only from the ford 9" differentials? i thought washer would be a good idea, id prefer to wreck a washer over a gear. i think i am going to try this sometime(probably with those variable speed MTD lawn tractor transaxles because there worth almost nothing to me). And using an ATV diff would be cool but you would need to modify the transaxle casing and weld in the ATV Diff casing to it or machine the transaxle case properly.

Just figured i would add another option to the list.