On a 2002 SE 6 speed, what would be the symptoms of the HLSD not working properly ?

 

HLSD is gear driven. If it failed, your car would not be drivable. If you hear a lot of grinding and crunching, you might have issues. If your just having trouble shifting, its probably your syncros, a common problem. Change your transmission fluid.

 

^^yeah what he said. Because it's in the tranny i am sure you'd know...

 

I'm not hearing grinding noise.... it possible that it's not locking or working properly...I mean some kind of slipping or I don't know cause some times it seems like only one wheel is spinning on snow and the other on asphalt is not...

 

Thats what an HLSD does. It will not lock both wheels in absolute slick conditions. If one wheel loses complete traction, it will act like an open diff, and send all the power to the spinning wheel.

Quote from www.howstuffworks.com
The Torsen (from Torque Sensing) works as an open differential when the amount of torque going to each wheel is equal. As soon as one wheel starts to lose traction, the difference in torque causes the gears in the Torsen differential to bind together. The design of the gears in the differential determines the torque bias ratio. For instance, if a particular Torsen differential is designed with a 5:1 bias ratio, it is capable of applying up to five times more torque to the wheel that has good traction.

These devices are often used in high-performance all-wheel-drive vehicles. Like the viscous coupling, they are often used to transfer power between the front and rear wheels. In this application, the Torsen is superior to the viscous coupling because it transfers torque to the stable wheels before the actual slipping occurs.

However, if one set of wheels loses traction completely, the Torsen differential will be unable to supply any torque to the other set of wheels. The bias ratio determines how much torque can be transferred, and five times zero is zero.

 

Great! Thanks for the info !