Re: 2nd gear, etc

["John Hertzman" <johnhertzman@domain.elided>]

In AD8-1012 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."

Joe is quite correct that Alan was wrong about Alfa boxes being ZF, and
consequently that Alan's comparison with BMW and Mercedes, and speculation
about cost-cutting engineering by ZF to meet Alfa's needs, were fallacious. A
few Alfa manual gearboxes, notably those used in the Montreal and the Sei,
were by ZF, but the normal Alfa manual boxes were pure Alfa, as Joe said.
However, Joe's "based on a Porsche design that Alfa licensed" is slightly
questionable, and his "this gearbox was designed as a 4-speed" is even a bit
more questionable.

The two individuals most responsible for Alfa's post-war design and
engineering were the very Italian Orazio Satta Puliga and the Austrian Rudolph
(or Rodolfo) Hruska, whose somewhat parallel careers started in 1938 at Alfa
(for Satta) and at Porsche (for Hruska). A critical distinction in the two
prewar careers is that Hruska was working on the industrial production
organization of Porsche's Volkswagen project, which had no parallel in Italy
or anywhere else in Europe as an industrial production project, while Alfa at
that time was mainly an aircraft engine builder for the military, less
concerned with efficient mass production. In 1946 Satta was appointed director
of Alfa's design department (l'Ufficio Studi Speciali dei Servizi
Progettazione e Sperimentazione) while in the same year Hruska undertook the
design, at Porsche, of the rear-engined four-wheel-drive Cisitalia formula one
car while Satta was revising the Alfa 158 into the championship-winning 159.
In 1950 Alfa introduced the Satta-designed 1900, "The family sedan that wins
races" and the direct antecedent of the reduced-scale Giuliettas and its
descendant 101, 105, and 115 cars, and a year later Hruska was hired to apply
his Volks-project honed skills to the more effective industrial production of
the 1900. It was in this general capacity of production engineering that
Hruska played a key role in developing the 750 Giulietta into the 101
Giulietta and the 1900 into the tipo 102 2000. One part of the rationalization
of Alfa manufacture for more efficient larger-scale production by Hruska was
the development of the "cambio unificato", a gearbox designed to be
manufactured in both column-shift and floor-shift versions with both
four-speed and five-speed versions for use in both the smallest and the
largest cars Alfa was then planning on building. It was in fact introduced as
a five speed box in the 2000 at the same time that it was applied as a four
speed box in the Giuliettas, and thus the common understanding that the fifth
speed was only added later is not quite correct; correct enough for the
Giulietta, but incorrect for the gearbox engineering. The fact that it was
designed by Hruska and the engineers he brought with him from Porsche at least
adds some shading to the idea that it was "based on a Porsche design that Alfa
licensed in the '50s"; there may well have been patents held by Porsche, and
there may well have been some licensing involved, but it was designed in-house
as an Alfa gearbox by Alfa engineers whose prior experience had been at
Porsche. The distinction may be modest, but it does exist.

The history of the gearbox design offers room for slightly different
interpretations of the gear-weight issues affecting synchro life. It was
designed to be quite robust enough for use in the forthcoming 2600, a car
comparable in size and intent to a 164 (a sedan, 1380 kg, 2720 mm wheelbase,
more a 'businessman's express' than a sports car) and is undoubtedly heavier
than a box designed just for a competitive 1300 cc sports car would have been.
Some might fault the company for not making bigger and better synchros, but it
is after all a fifty year old vintage design which was pretty good in its own
time and for its intended uses, and I'm happy enough to take it at that - with
a bit of lightening, perhaps, and with an incentive to drive with some respect
for the machine, and a willingness to accept some vintage maintenance
intervals and life expectancies along the way.

Cheers

John H.
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