Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2003 09:21:56 -0600
From: bearbvd@domain.elided (Greg Hermann)
Subject: RE: more on gear lightening- Warranties!
At 9:36 AM 8/29/03, Jason Hagen wrote:
Lightening the gears costs money,
yes, it does.
but may affect reliability and
strength of the gears.
No, it does NOT.
Greg
While it theoretically won't affect reliability of an otherwise-stock
car if done properly, I'm fairly certain that removing a whole bunch
of metal from the gears will affect their ultimate strength. Those
gearboxes are fairly overbuilt as far as I can tell, which is why
people get away with 24V 3 liters, twin turbos, Maserati V8s, Chevy
V8s, etc, and retain their stock gearboxes. When an Alfa gearbox
does fail, its usually because the supercharged Chevy V8 you put in
your Alfetta twisted the input shaft in half, not because a gear
failed. If you don't believe me, just think about how many times you
hear about a RWD Alfa gearbox failure vs. a Honda gearbox failure,
especially on modified cars. And that's exactly why the synchros
fail--the gears are a lot beefier than they have to be, and the
synchros aren't.