[Fot] gearbox legality

[Henry Frye]

Bill,

All good points. While you say we can't get any useful NEW parts, that
does not mean we can't find good parts. The only parts that came from
the usual parts suppliers in my race gearbox are the seals and gaskets.
And guess what, it leaks...

I guess since my only experience racing is with my TR4, I don't think it
is unreasonable to need to go through a gearbox every couple years.
Those who have raced reliable iron probably view that as ridiculous!

Cheers

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bill Babcock [mailto:billb at bnj.com]
> Sent: September 21, 2007 5:41 PM
> To: Henry Frye
> Cc: fot at autox.team.net
> Subject: Re: [Fot] gearbox legality
>
> This is one of those rare occasions when I don't agree with
> you Henry. No doubt deliberate shifting is the answer to
> longevity, and no doubt the cost of not shifting deliberately
> should modify behavior. But it doesn't. There are those folks
> that can get around a track pulling everything out of a car
> without grinding a gear. And those that can't. You see it at
> every level of racing--the people with mysterious mechanical
> sympathy that never break anything but still stand on
> podiums, and the mid-pack folks that can break the ears off a
> brass donkey. It's a talent, it's not a conscious decision.
>
>   The TR gearbox is painfully fragile and very expensive to
> optimize.
> There's fewer of them every day (it's like COBOL
> programmers-- thousands will die this year). Even when you
> have a really superbly assembled TR box it's life-span in
> even a 140 HP TR is relatively short, and there's no useful new parts.
>
> IMNSHO the idea is to keep racing these cars, not to price
> that foolish act beyond the means of the average folks. I'm
> all in favor of the compromises that do that. And for what
> it's worth, my Hardy Prentice-built CR box shifts at least as
> fast as my dog box, and snicks into gear like a Ferrari
> transmission. But you need to wait months for Hardy to watch
> enough television to build one (he stones the gears while he
> watching TV) and when you crate the transmission you might as
> well use ten dollar bills for packing material instead of
> newspaper, 'cause that's about what it will take.  The dog
> box is an economy measure (at least that's the story I told
> Diane, and I'm sticking with it).