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Originally Posted by craigayl
Richard
What really got me going on this topic was the statement from KEISLERGENE. He stated; "Simply put, Mr. Detranova missed a shift and engaged the gear only halfway when he released the clutch, causing the gear teeth to fail. There is absolutely no evidence of this in the photos and anyone who knows anything about the mechanics of this transmission knows that statement is way off base. What is someone to think when this kind of a statement comes from a company representative? It truly appears that there is a cover up and you are fabricating stories. To top it off, through all of this, no one from Keisler ever tried to retract that statement or say it was a mistake..
If you or anyone form Keisler would have simply stated that it is your opinion the torque capabilities of this transmission were exceeded, I'm sure you would have gotten much less grief. You could even be upfront about the obvious design flaw. It may be that this transmission will perform to its advertised specs with this flaw, but wouldn’t it be nice if it was corrected?? Maybe the torque specs could be raised!
Craig
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Well this thread heated up again!
Craig's issues are identical to many of ours.
It is frustrating and frankly unbelievable that a distributor does not know that the countershaft and mainshaft gears are constant mesh and cannot experience a sliding partial engagement that upon clutch release would damage the gears. This type of missed shift or incomplete engagement or even marginal contact always shows up as mechanical damage to the synchronizer teeth. Careful inspection of the photo of third gear shows none of the mechanical damage to the synchronizer teeth that accompany partial engagement or forced application without engagement, only damage to the gear teeth.
The gear simply experienced an ultimate strength failure where the load applied exceeded the component strength. As a repair center that sees many Tremec boxes both sold and maintained Keisler had to know this. Keisler also had to be aware of the misalignment of the gears. It is frankly incredulous that Keisler could see the insides of as many TKOs as they sell and maintain as both a distributor and a factory authorized service center and never see the misalignment. If you give Keisler the benefit of the doubt and say they have done all this depot maintenance, repair and blueprinting without seeing the misalignment then you have to ask yourself is this the type of product/service provider I should be doing business with? Perhaps I should be looking for an alternative product/service provider who pays attention to what he is working on.
If you look at the failed gearsets in Fordfan's box to determine cause you are looking directly at two misaligned gears. How can you possibly not see the misalignment. In calls to Tremec, Tremec indicated they were aware of the misalignment, it was not originally intended but was required for chip escape during manufacturing on the one peice countershaft. The misalignment was represented to me to have been present on all TKO-500s, TKO-600s and potentially other family members depending on when they were manufactured. The design drawings the individual, at Tremec, that I spoke to looked at showed the offset to be 0.149" and this is consistent with Fordfan's 0.140" measurement.
How can Keisler work on these boxes since 1999 and never observe the offset even when looking at Fordfan's box where it is centered in your field of vision. Moreover, if Keisler has no qualified engineering opinion how is it possible that they can have a failure analysis opinion which is a very rigorous engineering discipline? These types of conflicting statements from the distributor are quite troubling. Craig's comments could not be more true,
"It truly appears that there is a cover up and you are fabricating stories."
In the end The Keisler problem simply distills down to are these the type of people you want to do business with. The Tremec problem is a seperate and bigger issue. They clearly have known of this issue (misalignment) over several generations of the transmission. They also have chosen to do nothing about it.
The 3550/TKO family of transmissions has a colorful history of problems that show up when you do an Internet search on Tremec + Problems or TKO *** + problems. The treatment of the users in these posts is anything but encouraging and it is certainly long standing.
The statement that racing usage voids any manufacturer / reseller warranty obligations flies in the face of their advertisement that says,
"Track Tested, Race Proven - Whether it is the endurance needed for Road Racing or the sheer strength necessary to win at the drags, there's a TREMEC transmission built for you." Additionally as someone else pointed out I don't think there are any Mustangs that can pick the front tires off the ground like the photo in their advertisement - on street tires.
The bad news for Tremec is not new news for them. It is only new news for guys like us who have not had 10+ years of experience with the problem. I suspect that most disadvantaged users basically gave up with a you can't fight city hall attitude and maybe you can't. Maybe it is better to pack up our tent and go elsewhere. If that is the case we should do our level best to prevent others like ourselves from being similarily disadvantaged by companies and products with problems like these.
Even though Keisler has made some incredible statements for an authorized reseller and repair depot at least they commented. I am not sure I believe let alone agree with a number of their statements but they did comment. The church mouse in this whole event has been Tremec and likely for good reason. They knew and did nothing!
Ed