My 2002 V10 Excursion is the family travel wagon and trailer puller. It's all stock with 3.78 non LS rear axle.

I'm thinking a locker would be the cheapest best thing i could add to help with beach driving and mud. Not doing serious wheeling, no lift, no big tires.

So, something like a Yukon or Eaton auto-locker would probably help a lot for $500-700

But I also found a rear diff from a 2011 F250 with factory E-locker for about the same price. Of course it's a lot more work but it seems like a much better solution.

I am pretty ignorant about all this.

 

2011 rear axle will require modifications to fit... not to mention different wheels (different offset), different brakes. I wouldn't want two sperate wheels on my vehicle or the brakes on the rear axle unmatched to the front. 2011 brakes are 'bigger'.

 

For your use I would go with a Detroit Truetrac

 

That's the direction I'm likely to go with my '01 with 3.73

Hard part is finding someone qualified to install and set it up.

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/DTL-915A550

 

The 2011 lacks the tone ring and VSS.

 

They aren't that difficult to install.

 

Actually, I'm thinking if i got the axle cheap enough, i would just swap the locker. This video makes it look pretty straightforward:

 

They have both.

 

Got a Detroit locker installed in my EX a couple of months street manners seem pretty good. I’ve had several types of diffs and the Detroit is hard to beat.

I also ran a Truetrac in my street car and that thing handled clutch dumps onto a set of ET Streets with no issues. Was actually really surprised how well it held up.

 

I'm putting the '11+ style e-locker in my '01 10.5 rear axle. I figured for the price i got it for from Ford, I couldn't beat it and I wanted a locker of some sort in the rear, so I went with it. I watched a few videos and did a lot of research to find that a lot of ppl say that the tone ring goes right off the old diff and on the new factory e-locker if you heat it up with a propane, Map, Oxy/Acetylene (sp?) torch. I'm hoping that's the case anyway. I will post how it goes in my build thread when I get it done.

 

Following.
I watched the video above and was wondering if it required re shimming and other setup of the rear that he did not show.

 

if it were me and I wasn't regearing, I'd probably replace all the bearings and races if hasn't been done in a while. It would be terrible to be in there and do all that work just to have a bearing with 100k+ miles on it go bad when you're done. Not to say it would happen but there's that chance. If the bearings have been replaced recently, at a minimum, it would be a good idea to replace the diff bearings and races and have a diff shim kit on hand if you needed them. There's always that chance that you'd have to reset the pinion depth as well which is another reason to replace all the bearings. You'll be in there anyway so why not.

 

New carrier bearings and a carrier shim kit are all you need, you can get a kit off of ebay that has both for around $100, no need to mess with the pinion if you are just changing carriers.

 

Keeping an eye on this thread. The 2011+ Rear locker is on my to do list...