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NoCoast
T5 in an RX7.
T5 in a V8.
T9 in lower horsepower apps.

Toyota T50 dog boxes I've only very shortly looked at and it seemed they were quite pricey.

Fuck FWD. Go to Drenth and check out the affordability of the VW 02A gearboxes. Gemini makes them too.

t50 dog boxes also suck as much as stock ones, durability wise.

rumor has it that in Sweden, there is a guy on every street corner selling 4 speed volvo m45 boxes with close ratio dog ring gears for like $2K...

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john vanlandingham

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DirkaDirkaJack
so back to the original question, so far you can get cheap dogboxes for:

some I4 ford motor
....and?

i thought maybe the domestic V8 guys would have something cheap?

i think i have seen dog sets for rabbits and RX7's for cheap?

I still don't understand the "what for" part.


For Group2 wins?
Or Max attack?

And no I realise i don't know what you think cheap is.

What's cheap?

not even rally dude, just thinking like amateur motorsport in general. this was a very hypothetical question.

cheap is less than $20k, which seems like what you need to spend for a "real" dogbox. looks like T5 dog sets are around $4k, cool.

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DirkaDirkaJack
i think i have seen dog sets for rabbits and RX7's for cheap?

Where? I haven't seen anything for reasonable values of "cheap".

One of my roadracer friends has a roadracer dogbox in his roadracer RX-7 and I was poking through the piles of parts he had and the gears and everything looked like they were sized about right for a motorcycle. He could change his ratios in about an hour, though, which was nice for him. And it wasn't anywhere near "cheap"...

I don't mind rebuilding frequently, I have to do that anyway because the stock boxes suck. One of my back-burner projects is a Mazda-to-Chevy bellhousing so I can use any gearbox that will bolt up to a Chevy bellhousing, which is kind of the de facto racing gearbox standard in this country. I figure if they can handle 9000rpm shifts with V8 torque, they can probably handle what I'd throw at them.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/20/2010 08:44PM by Pete.

The cheapest box will be one you fine used somewhere.

I spent about $3900 for my VW motorsports box that had syncros but was reliable and had very good ratios. That included a short final drive and a limited slip.

Another good option

http://www.jericoperformance.com/wc4.htm



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/21/2010 12:28PM by derek.

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DirkaDirkaJack
so back to the original question, so far you can get cheap dogboxes for:

some I4 ford motor
....and?

i thought maybe the domestic V8 guys would have something cheap?

i think i have seen dog sets for rabbits and RX7's for cheap?

Domestic V8 guys use automatics.


The T5 is pretty ubiquitous. It came in Mustangs, Camaros, S10/S15 pickups, all sorts of things. Fords, Chevys, wide-ratios, close-ratios, blahblahblah. It's main advantage (besides being reasonably strong) is that it's modular, which means you can bolt different bellhousings to it and different tailpieces and end up with just about whatever you want. The next main advantage is that they're cheap - I just got a used WC one out of a mustang last weekend for $50.

For more HP, I think the T56 is the next most common.

As for the T9 - seems to be pretty rare in the US, but common in yurp. Talk to John.

If you think you can find a cheap dogbox for a rabbit, you're high.


Personally, I would never run a dogbox. Straight cut gears, yes. Dogbox? Eeyuck. I've got better things to do with my money/time.

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alkun
rumor has it that in Sweden, there is a guy on every street corner selling 4 speed volvo m45 boxes with close ratio dog ring gears for like $2K...

and all we get around here are oranges or watermelons.


dog or synchro, i'd love to learn how to pull apart my (now blown) tranny and put it back together myself.

Jack, I would think the DURATEC MZR Mazda/Ford 4 cylinder engine and a t5 dogbox would be about right in the right smiles/dollar ratio department for what's commonly available here in the U.S.

And you're talking about real racecar shit, with vendors that offer a wide variety of parts, easy to get, common, NA or FI, Big displacemnt 4 cyls, 2.3 to 2.5 liter that actually have torque.

And t5's are in every rednecks backyard or front porch for $50. Whether they come from a mustang or a camaro. t5 or world class t5...

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pikespeakgtx

And t5's are in every rednecks backyard or front porch for $50. Whether they come from a mustang or a camaro. t5 or world class t5...

awesome!!! I don't have a T5 at all, so I'm not a redneck!!

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---** To be in compliance with the Anarchy **---
Jorden R. Kleier
Baraboo, Wisconsin, USA
1990 Mazdog Protege 4WD
1973

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SgtRauksauff

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pikespeakgtx

And t5's are in every rednecks backyard or front porch for $50. Whether they come from a mustang or a camaro. t5 or world class t5...

awesome!!! I don't have a T5 at all, so I'm not a redneck!!

I have one but since it is on the floor in the garage not in the back yard with the spare engines I am going to assume I am not a redneck either.

Oh hey, cool. Coming at this as a roadrace guy, so grain of salt and all that jazz; I have done a bit of research on this over the years though.

Cheapest dogbox in my experience is going to be something used from someone tired of screwing with the damn thing. I'm a Mazda guy, and picked up an 80s vintage ex-something-or-other-Pro-level Leeson Mandeville crashbox for something like 3-4 grand, and then pulled my hair out at trying to figure out what in the linkage is different enough from the OEM Mazda stuff to make it keep sticking in gear. Or the actual factory race gearboxes come up for sale every so often, but they've been out of production for 5-10 years themselves. The factory race boxes are evidently pretty nice though, and from looking at gear sizes, either probably will hold a lot more power than the smoothcase gearboxes.

New... really depends on power levels? Taylor Race Engineering makes a RWD gearbox for 9-10 grand using Hewland Mk9 or Mk5 gears which are not really what I'd think of as robust past 150ish ft/lbs of torque; Hewland rates the Mk5 at something like 240hp and maybe that's limited by the VW ring gear size, but maybe not. Saenz Performance makes a couple purpose built dogboxes; the older ones are rated at 320 ft/lbs or 580 ft/lbs and use as far as I can tell, either a T9 or T10 bellhousing. Evidently those are pretty durable and have been used in some offroad stuff too; no idea for price, but I've seen them available used for $2k-ish. And I know of at least one guy roadracing a G-Force GF5R (not the T5 gearkit) which bolts to a T10 bellhousing too; I imagine the Jerico boxes are broadly similar. And it's not like bellhousings are complicated to fab.

Blah blah blah, close ratio synchro gearsets available for stuff too, etc and so on. And I'm totally leaving aside questions of suitability or necessity to people who know better.

Cheapest RWD thing going is the G-force T-5. Entirely new build off the shelf from them is between $2500-3000 with every option. The only 'stock' part is the case and the bearings, clips, bolts, etc. Everything else is replaced and upgraded. I recently put one in a customer's S2000 (synchro version) and it went well. It is dead simple to adapt to just about anything (flat mount surface, 4 bolts, easy centering), can be had with cable or electric speedo, is small and relatively light, VERY easy to take apart and service, and most importantly, READILY AVAILABLE ALL DAY LONG IN THE USA. Minor service parts are at the local ford dealer. I've also done a Jerico in an autocross RX-7, but it is more expensive, harder to fit, 4 speeds, though indestructible. A different class of transmission, for sure.

Andris

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NoCoast
Gemini makes them too.

Gemini is now Ricardo, and the last few times I tried to call them to get info about 020 gearboxes or clutchpacks for my Gemini-built VW Motorsports diff, they never deigned to call me back.

Muncie or Richmond 4 speed have alot of dog options. It evolved into other boxes and is still widely used in Australian SuperCar. I looked into it for my chevelle, it wasnt too bad...I wanna say high 2's for all the gears.