Completely depends on your budget, needs, and opinion on axle strength when locking.

My experience - (with the caveat that I do not spend much time in the rocks) :
-I ran a detroit/detroit combo for about a year. Great on the trails, not so much on slick roads through a Colorado winter, especially scary on icy freeways heading up to the ski areas.
-Pulled the front detroit and replaced with a truetrac. Much more highway friendly, but still quirky having the autolocker in the rear. Minor, if any, change with offroad performance.
-Blew the rear detroit, replaced with another limited. By far the best on-road and winter weather performance. Minor change offroad. Again, I spend little time with wheels in the air, so there wasn't a huge offroad performance hit between the limited and the locker. As noted by Dyna, a little brake pressure (or maybe the BLD?) will get more power to the tire with traction to help get through an obstacle.

Going forward, I won't use another auto-locker unless I move down south somewhere. I like the truetrac because of the performance vs price, and it fits my needs. I like the arb, just not in a d30. And if I lived somewhere that did not have snow and ice, real hard to beat a pair of detroits.

 

What is it about lockers that makes them not a good option for the snow? Is there something else that can be done to improve snow and ice performance, other than studs and chains?

 

With lockers in snow, straight ahead is fine. Turning, a rear locker wants to fishtail and a front locker wants to push.

 

Lockers actually work great in snow. They are a little scary on ice because you can't always steer but if you have a selectable locker up front you can turn it off when its ice

 

Lockers in compact snow and ice can be a handfull. With an auto locker like a Detroit, there may not be enough traction to allow the inside tire to unlock during the corner. This will cause understeer. The vehicle will want to plow straight ahead. I don't have any issue with auto lockers in the rear axle in this situation as they can be more help than hassle but in the front, they're not a great choice. I usually just stay in 2WD unless it gets deep.

Off road snow wheeling is great with auto lockers at both ends. I much prefer them over selectables. The problem with selectables is, like 4WD, you need them engaged before you need them engaged (make sense?). If you try to engage them after you're stuck they don't always help.

 

When I'm wheeling in snow, I tend to keep my rear axle locked most of the time, and then unlock for tight corners where there's a reasonable amount of traction.

 

Thanks! If you're referring to the asci jeep, unfortunately some browsers do not line it up correctly

 

This video is awesome

Reminds me of middle school science class.

 

I'm curious... If pressing the brake helps transfer torque, wouldn't the BLD system that the JK has work wonders with a Truetrac? Doesn't the BLD just drag the brake on the wheel that is spinning faster on an axle? Wouldn't that mean that you'd have up to 1/4 the torque loss from dragging the brakes yourself, depending on if you've got 1 or 2 wheels slipping?

Certainly lockers would be best for the most hardcore stuff... I'm just really curious how the BLD system would interact with Truetracs.

 

I haven't seen the JK system work with a Truetrac so I can't say for sure how it works. I did a test with a Nissan Titan (with a Truetrac rear diff) with one tire on the ground and the other tire was in the air. The truck drove right off the jack stand.

How about it rear Truetrac guys? Willing to do the test?