Cool DirtFish story

I have not used Hollinger, but when Group N first started allowing dogchange (to assist subaru with 5spd breakage issues) the Hollinger was one of the best, and they had a good lockout device too.

I tend to stay away from the Aussie gearboxes, again you get what you pay for and the currency exchange these days rules them out entirely.

A now legendary NA rally driver once told me "if I have to pay for it myself, I will buy something that actually works", when I asked him about the new fancy suspension on his car. So keep that in mind when asking around, anyone with a "hookup" or "sponsorship" has ulterior motives.

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NoCoast



Thanks for the contribution Pete! Great information for sure!

What would you suggest for checking the engagement and making sure the dogs all touch? Plastigauge or similar?

absolutely, thanks Pete. And yes, the tranny I drove in was KAPS. And I do expect the Modena to work differently, so I appreciate the heads up.

I may be asking for your number and some time on the phone during the re-build if that's OK

Grant,

You can typically just hold them togther and see with the naked eye with some good light. I've seen a 5 dog gear with one dog out of time .120"!! PPG


If I have a concern ($14k gearset) I will assemble the shafts into a case with a window cut out, put some dykem blue on them and bang the gears a while using a drill motor to drive the input shaft. Take it aprt and see if any dogs are untouched.

When you have 1 dog out of time, on say a 5 dog system, in the drive direction you have only 4 dogs making contact, under decel you've only got a single dog maing contact. So not only will it(the one dog) get super effed, but the dogring, fork and the gear will be loaded on one side. The gears needle brgs get effed, the ring gets effed, and the fork gets it to as the ring is loaded in a weird way, burns the shit out of the fork kinda like driving around with your hand on the shifter, makes the fork ride hard on the ring...seen them blue from this.

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Gravel Spray
Grant,

You can typically just hold them togther and see with the naked eye with some good light. I've seen a 5 dog gear with one dog out of time .120"!! PPG

This is great....this is why I like doing things like this, I learn a lot more.

anyway, if I do this by sight/hand with a light a feeler gauge, what's the smallest acceptable gap? If i can slip a .0015" in there, is that OK?

i remember reading this a long time ago, glad I just found it again:

http://www.hewland.com/svga/advice.html

Ideally, you will have zero gap at any dog, they should all contact fully. Another thing to look for I failed to mention earlier is the machined taper between the gear’s lug dog and the ring dog lug, they should all be in full contact and parallel. I've also seen where the dog ring has like a 5' taper and the gear side dog has 7' taper, no good. This will cause a point to point contact and accelerate dog degradation. I think this difference in angles is due to worn tooling or tooling not setup consistently. Some of the cheaper gearsets have all kinds of these issues, even the radius at the tip and base of the dog lugs can be inconsistent and cause failure so inspect them all and don’t be afraid to send them back… a phone call and shipping is cheaper than a single ruined event.

Take the time up front to get it all right and on event have your co-driver take note of any missed shifts because many times the driver is making panic shifts(usually under braking) and has more important things going on like staying alive, so a good co-driver will take notes on buzzed shifts and try to get an idea of which gears are taking abuse. Most of the drivers I worked with were either renting a car from me or having me run their program so even if they knew they buzzed a dog they would'nt admit it as they knew $1200 parts and 8 hours labor was likely coming so we ripped the box every event no matter what. Also if you can swing it buy the lightest flywheel/clutch you can too. Tilton makes the best kit, a light flywheel and a 7” twin disc will also help the box live longer. I’ve only used the sintered metal discs but Buffum told me they went to the feather weight carbon discs and it nearly eliminated dog issues.

Remember that when buying a dogbox from anyone they are selling you a twenty rock, and the pipe to smoke it in….cuz you WILL be back for more..(parts) I always recommend to guys looking to go dog in a 5spd to instead consider a 6spd conversion first, it’s a tad cheaper than a cheap gearkit and the 6spd is bullet proof stock plus you get an active CD. No matter what brand, material or quality the bottom line is that the 5spd case is marginal, and it's shaft spacing limits the overall size of the gears.


Edit #2; For the record, Ramana Lagemann was not only was the best driver we worked with(technially astute, knew how to set up a car) but also the cleanest and most honest with the gearbox(4 dog brena), he only once had a missed shift, and came up to me during service to tell me, "3rd gear downshift, I zinged it good". When we tore it down the only scratch he ever put on it was right where he said it would be.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/27/2010 07:27PM by Gravel Spray.

Very nice and informative Pete, thanks for the lesson and sharing your knowledge.

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heymagic
Very nice and informative Pete, thanks for the lesson and sharing your knowledge.

OK everuybody is sharing: the undercut of the dogs is so normal rotation of the things will mechanically pull the things together into full engagement. Think of a ramp only a ramp with 0, 3 5 or whatever degrees Slide the
Coupling muff", slider,, dog rong or in the case of every dog box i worked on since middle of last centrury, slide the OTHER GEAR over (Motorcycles don't use separate dog rings, they have dogs in the side of some gears and slots in the sides of others)
so think it's sliding down the shaft and rotating around---as soon as it cotacts the tip of the dog, its gonning to get pulled in by the 3,or 5 or whatever degree ramp..

And note o degree or 3 degree gave WAY FAST--virtually full thottle---no backl off shifts---and frequent servce since it was really only the detent system holding you engaged. 5 degree meant way extended life like YEARS but you had to back off (too slow) or keep FULL throttle and clutch it!


That said, only thing a Subie 5 speed should be used for is maybe a wheel chock for a semi or a 747 maybe.

"It's the stingy man who pays the most".

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john vanlandingham

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heymagic
Very nice and informative Pete, thanks for the lesson and sharing your knowledge.

OK everuybody is sharing: the undercut of the dogs is so normal rotation of the things will mechanically pull the things together into full engagement. Think of a ramp only a ramp with 0, 3 5 or whatever degrees Slide the
Coupling muff", slider,, dog rong or in the case of every dog box i worked on since middle of last centrury, slide the OTHER GEAR over (Motorcycles don't use separate dog rings, they have dogs in the side of some gears and slots in the sides of others)
so think it's sliding down the shaft and rotating around---as soon as it cotacts the tip of the dog, its gonning to get pulled in by the 3,or 5 or whatever degree ramp..

And note o degree or 3 degree gave WAY FAST--virtually full thottle---no backl off shifts---and frequent servce since it was really only the detent system holding you engaged. 5 degree meant way extended life like YEARS but you had to back off (too slow) or keep FULL throttle and clutch it!


That said, only thing a Subie 5 speed should be used for is maybe a wheel chock for a semi or a 747 maybe.

"It's the stingy man who pays the most".

John is 100% correct, bonus points for "wheel chock"

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john vanlandingham


"It's the stingy man who pays the most".

you callin' me stingy? don't make me come up there and put Subaru decals all over your mailbox!


I'm gonna drive the fawk out of my 747 wheel chawk!

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Jon Burke

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john vanlandingham


"It's the stingy man who pays the most".

you callin' me stingy? don't make me come up there and put Subaru decals all over your mailbox!


I'm gonna drive the fawk out of my 747 wheel chawk!

You come up I'll show you my Fed-ex in overnight 1st Edition copy of SRTUSA
"2006 A Retrospective in Photos" 156pp of high quality, full color prints, signed by Ken Block saying "To my No1 Fan"

And while you're paralyzed with awe, I'll sticker your windshield over with "Viva the Prole-le-ralliat" stickers......and you'll be so doubly thunderstuck at how cool they are you won't notice you can see and go straight at 90L.

Ha!

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john vanlandingham
"Viva the Prole-le-ralliat" stickers......

Ha!

I always wondered what that meant but was too lazy to find out until now, so I googled it. First result/link I got was this:


viva le prole le ralliat - cheers for the offspring ralliat (proper translation?)


the second link was this....LOL:
http://www.rallyanarchy.com/phorum/read.php?2,25683,25774

(somethings never change! ha HA!)

thx again, Pete, I appreciate the novela you've written so far.

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Gravel Spray
a light flywheel and a 7” twin disc will also help the box live longer. I’ve only used the sintered metal discs but Buffum told me they went to the feather weight carbon discs and it nearly eliminated dog issues.

another question for you/kind of playing devils advocate...what you said earlier about the dogs banging back and fourth with a 'clutch shift' makes sense. But if you just depress it halfway (so it doesn't fully disengage, still keeping forward driveline pressure on it, but able to slip for any shock loading), wouldn't this have similar effect as super lightweight twin carbon clutch and lightweight flywheel?

i already have a lightweight flywheel and a fairly light 4-puck disc, I'm just trying to minimize wear with what I got.

Also, to be clear, this is what we were doing at Dirtfish...NOT full clutch-in shifts, but just quick jabs....the clutch point on those trannys is so low, that I wouldn't be surprised if they were even 25% disengaged clutch 'jabs'.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/27/2010 10:56PM by Jon Burke.

The Modena is actually pretty good bang for the buck, really, but you get what you pay for. Not unbreakable by any means, despite what MRT used to advertise. Just keep in mind it's a budget dogbox but you would have to spend a shit-ton more to get something significantly better. Treat it nicely and it will last a while but be prepared for the inevitable maintenance down the road.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/28/2010 01:30AM by Doivi Clarkinen.

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DaveK
Was just curious if you guys have worked with Hollinger ones and where they'd rate as they didn't make the best or worst list.

Dave

I've got about 10 years experience with the Holinger and they are very well made. Two piece input shaft (reduces a lot of the wind-up) and they supply their own bronze shift forks. I would not recommend a dog gearset that used the stock Subaru shift forks. They will eventually break and at the very least will pound out the plastic pads that ride on the shift rings.
Pete mentioned the clever shift lockout that prevents two selector rods being engaged at once. Modena later copied this but not as well. The Holinger gears are really wide so they had to make reverse gear narrower than stock. So you have to be gentle with reverse. If you are brutal with it trying to back out of a ditch you can easily break it.
Dave Hintz has a Holinger main box and a Modena he uses as a spare. I just went through the Holinger a couple days ago as he had broken reverse (just chipped a couple teeth, actually) and we also replaced a couple of gears that the dogs were getting worn on. Only cost about $3200 for the parts...