[alfa] Re: gear lightening / 2nd synchro

[Vince Strazzabosco <vstrazzabosco@xxxxxxxxx>]

Chiming in from a different side.....

Fate did strange things for me, a brief flirtation with a rustbucket
Spyder never took root and I ended up with BMW 2002s to play with
instead. 

Natch, the little German boxes also have a problem with the 1-2
shift.  The early cars had the same synchronizers as early Porsches,
and they were easily crunched.  Later ones lasted longer, but the
transmissions (ZF and Getrag)just weren't designed for American style
shifting.

As for driving in Italy....  Last year I learned that one must drive
aggressively to prevent Italian drivers from taking advantage of
one's kindness.  Let one scooter through and a dozen will follow; cut
off one scooter and a dozen others will notice and stay out of your
way.

vince
Naperville, IL


> Date: Sat, 30 Aug 2003 12:14:28 -0700
> From: George Graves <gmgraves@domain.elided>
> Subject: [alfa] Re: gear lightening / 2nd synchro
> 
> This wasn't a rant, and I think that you are right. These
> transmissions 
> were NOT made for Stop Light Grands Prix, and its not just an Alfa 
> transmission "problem," It's a characteristic of many older
> European 
> car transmissions and virtually ALL Italian ones. Ferraris up till
> the 
> early 'nineties had the so-called "weak second gear synchronizer"
> as 
> did Maseratis, Fiats, and Lancias along with Alfa Romeos. 
> Contemporary 
> road tests of the De Tomaso Pantera all mentioned weak second gear 
> synchros in the Getrag box that DeTomaso fitted to these cars (as
> does 
> a recent "buyers' guide" section on Pantera in the British "Classic
> and 
> Sports Car" Magazine).  Porsches had the same characteristic well
> into 
> the 911 era, but they fixed it earlier than the Italians. In fact, 
> almost any car which sports "Porsche-style transmission
> synchronizers" 
> will exhibit this characteristic. They are good, but the most
> strain on 
> synchros is on the first-second shift. American cars had strong
> second 
> gear syncros because early American designed four speeds were aimed
> at 
> drag racers. So it's not that the European synchros are weak -they
> are 
> perfectly adequate when driven properly. It's just that US 
> transmissions had super robust shynchros due to the type of driving
> 
> that American "performance cars" are subjected to. Nowadays, most 
> European and Japanese car builders, realizing that American driving
> 
> needs are quite different from those of the average European
> driver, 
> build their transmissions more along the lines of American designed
> 
> Borg-Warners and Muncie boxes with regard to synchronizers.
> 
> My GTV-6 has, apparently, NEVER been abused in the manner which
> lunches 
> synchros -at least since it was replaced for some unknown reason in
> 
> 1994,  With close to a hundred thousands miles on it, all the
> synchros 
> are perfect. This was revealed recently when my tranny was
> disassembeld 
> to change a suspected loose bushing (it wasn't loose).  I always 
> double-clutch to down shift and pause between gears to upshift 
> (especially when the tranny is cold - being in the rear of the car,
> an 
> Alfetta transmission cannot rely on conducted engine heat to warm
> the 
> transmission, it must generate it's own heat through friction), so
> my 
> synchros should last a long time.
> 
> George Graves
> '86 GTV-6 3.0 'S'


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