10 bolt vs 12 bolt G80’s

[mcarlo86]

I have heard many horror stories of the 10 bolt G80 “Gov-bomb” problems. Is the 12 bolt G80 any better?

 

[SquareRoot]

My 21 GMC AT4 has the G80 in it. You'd think if it was such a bad design GM wouldn't still be using it 40 years later. If you understand how it works and use it like a normal human it works great. I love mine, I use it a lot in the sand. What kills them is excessive wheel speed and suddenly grabbing traction. So if you start a burnout on the shoulder of the road its gonna grenade the instant it hits asphalt.

 

[TotalyHucked]

Agreed with Mike ^ They're fine for 99% of their use. The only one I ever hurt was the one in my '05 Z71 that I had in college. Dogged that truck everywhere I went, it had HEAVY 33s on it and was offroad alot being slung sideways or buried. Eventually, the Gov-bomb would start randomly ratcheting while turning, I knew it was near the end. But it took ~75k miles of abuse like that without grenading. I traded the truck in when the trans started to slip and a now buddy ended up with it (I didn't know him then). He drove it for another several years and ~100k miles with no issue and it still had the original rear end as far as he knew. They may have rebuilt it but idk.

Point is, for a normal use truck, they're fine in either 10 or 12-bolt form. If you're going to beat on it, upgrade to a Detroit Trutrac or other aftermarket diff

 

[bucket]

For whatever reason, they tend to hold up in every axle, except for the older 8.5 and 9.5 (like, pre-'99 ish... for the most part) axles. Now I realize that GM sold literally millions of those axles, so there’s bound to be a lot of failures, but I've seen them fail in SUVs being driven normally on the street, by soccer moms.