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Whether your vehicle is front-wheel drive (FWD), rear-wheel drive (RWD), four-wheel drive (4WD), or all wheel drive (AWD), power must be delivered to at least one pair of left and right wheels so the vehicle can
move. This is made possible by the differential. The differential is the component that distributes power
from the vehicle’s transmission, while allowing the wheels to be powered and to rotate at different speeds.
A differential is so named because two wheels on a drive axle need to be able to both receive power, and
also turn at different rates of speed. The differential basically allows each wheel to spin freely of the other,
while still providing power to both. If one wheel is spinning slower when turning, the differential
mechanism will keep driving the other wheel without any jerking, binding, or skidding.
If a vehicle did not have a differential, the driving wheels would be locked together and forced to spin at
the same speed, making turning difficult, and increasing the chance of losing control of the vehicle. The
absence of a differential would also be hard on the vehicle drivetrain because one tire would have to grab
and slip on the road surface to maintain the same speed as the other. This force would transmit through
the axle from one wheel to the other and place a huge strain on the axle components as well as the tires.