I recently installed an Aussie locker in my 84 short bed after my lincoln locker blew apart. I have installed several lockers like this in the past on my other rigs and had excellent results.
Since my casing was damaged, I bought a used 3rd member that was in excellent shape and installed the Aussie in it and verified everything was within the specs supplied in the instructions. After assembly I noticed the locker had a large amount of play between the cross pin and the "u" groove in the locker gears. It almost seemed like the "u" groove was to large.
After I installed everything and test drove it I found the locker to work just as advertised with no problems in function. I do however have a loud bang sound whenever I take off from a stop or when going into 2nd gear. After 2nd gear the noise is not very noticeable. Upon further inspection I found that their was an excessive amount of backlash. About an inch and a half turn of the drive shaft. Upon further inspection I found this to be from the excessive play between the cross pin and the "u" grove in the locker gear.
Has anyone else had this problem before? I contacted Aussie and was told this is normal. I don't buy this and think I am getting jerked around. I have installed this type of locker several times before and never had this problem. I am worried about breaking the cross pin or some other drive line component from the constant banging.

 

My lockrite has the excess play in the cross pin as well. No problems so far

 

Do you also have a loud bang from the rearend?

 

Normal.
Lunch box lockers typically have higher backlash numbers.

 

I've installed Aussie's in my son's 4 cyl diffs and my V6 diffs and they are all like that.


Been running them for several years and thousands of miles. My son is running 31's and I'm running 35's. No problems. I even bought a used one and it's still going.

 

That pop is normal. You'll be ably to make it do it once you learn the locker. Take a sharp corner, stop, then excellerate strait. spartan, lockrite, Aussie, even my Detroit now. Makes a hell of a noise.