On Fri, 9 Aug 2002, Joe Elliott wrote:
> The answer to Alan's question is that Alfa's manual gearboxes, are not made
> by ZF, but rather in-house by Alfa. They are based on a Porsche design
> that Alfa licensed in the '50s. Premature synchro wear is also endemic to
> pre-'88 ass-engined Porsches (and I assume the 550 as well). However, this
> gearbox was designed as a 4-speed (read: that much less rotating mass) so
> the problem was not as pronounced until Alfa added a fifth gear to the
> design. And while Alfa, with their licensed-from-Porsche gearbox, was
> among the first manufacturers to offer 5 forward gears, Porsche stuck to 4
> until even the cheapest econoboxes offered 5. (Although I'm sure there's a
> Porsche enthusiast out their somewhere who can tell you why 4 is greater
> than 5 right after he finishes explaining how his 911 is better balanced
> than a GTV6, how controls placed on the passenger side of the dash are very
> ergonomic, and why ridiculous rear camber changes in cornering are a good
> thing.) So one theory I've heard more than once is that while the synchros
> were a marginal '50s design in the first place, the reason Alfas suffer
> even more than old Porsches is because Alfa added a significant amount of
> rotating mass to the input shaft (the 5th input gear is the biggest) that
> the synchros were never designed to deal with. But yes, lots of other old
> cars wear out their synchros, too, although Alfas are probably the worst,
> followed closely by Porsche.
Speaking of factual errors...
5-speeds were common on Porsches by 1966, with the exception of the 912,
which was the stripped model (and frequently came with the same 5-speed
box standard on the 911). Cheap econoboxes didn't commonly get 5-speeds
until the late 70s or so. Even the supposed-to-be-cheap 914 only came
with a 5-speed when it was introduced in 1969. After that year, it was
impossible to buy a new Porsche with a 4-speed gearbox.
Ridiculous camber changes were also pretty much done away with by the
introduction of the trailing arm'd 911 in 1965. The swing axles inherited
from the Beetle died with the 356. Unless you're talking about the front
suspension, which of course used the same struts that nearly every car
made today uses. If you want to smear a German manufacturer for sticking
to swing axles, you can use Mercedes instead, which stuck to them well
into the 1970s. You can needle a British maker, too, by using Triumph
as an example.
As for the synchro design of the 50s, there are really only two commonly
used synchro designs even today: Porsche (circa 1950) and Bendix (circa
1935). The Porsche was meant to be an improvement on the Bendix design.
It's certainly more complicated. I note that FIAT, when they added a
5th forward gear to their 4-speed 'box, used the then-new(ish) Porsche
design for the 5th gear, but decided to keep the existing Bendix design
for the other four. Pull apart any manual gearbox made anywhere in the
world within the last three months, and you're going to find a direct
copy of one of those two designs.
While we're slamming other manufacturers, we can at least be smug about
the fact that Alfa used synchros on all forward gears as early as the
1900, whereas it was common for even expensive (Jaguar) British cars to
do without a synchro on 1st until 1968.
james montebello