Richmond 5 speed or Toploader or Tremec TKO

[Rebel1]

Certainly is Ant.....It is referred to as the Road race version.

http://www.clubcobra.com/forums/show...ght=tremec+600

Have a read of the above thread to obtain an impression.

Cheers

[Michael C Henry]

In the new January 05 Hot Rod pp 125 there is a blurb under new products about a T56 Ford Six-speed replacement trans from Rockland Standard Gear. Tha web site www.regear.com didn't go through for me and there is a phone #877/774/4327.

[Anthony]

Rebel 1,

I would never believe 100% what any manufacturer says about their product, they're trying to sell it to you. The TKO600 has slightly wider spaced gears than the wide ratio toploader, so to me it is still a wide ratio 4 speed with an over drive, although it has closer ratio's than the 3550 with the truck gear ratio spread.

I can tell you that on the track, my car with the toploader wide ratio gears may be a little too wide, and I'm considering either going to a close ratio toploader, or a true close ratio 5 speed, richmond, jerico, or G-force.

I wonder if the LeMans vipers (Archer's) or the Ron Fellow's C5 vettes run their standard gears as offered in the street cars, or they have custom gear ratio boxes. The street viper's T56 is a wide ratio 4 speed with a double overdrive, and I believe the street vette is the same.

[Ant]

Anthony,

I couldn't agree more with you, I have been pondering over the gear spacings of the Tremec 600, and nothing lights up to attract me!
Regarding Ron Fellows etc, I haven't looked at the regulations they run under, but I would imagine they either run custom gear sets or a helluva high numbered rear end, because the overdrives are ridiculously high!

I have looked at Richmond 5 speeds, the road race item would interest me with custom ratios, but they are almost as expensive as a Jerico or G-Force, at present I looking at a Jerico WC4-4 with 2.60, 1.72, 1.28, 1.00 ratios, but the five speed may be better with a lower first gear of about 2.90 and bring the intermediate ratios closer together? Also with the WC4-4 they can supply a speedo drive, not sure with the five speed.

Might do some sums again and see what I come up with as far as the Richmond RR box, then I could use my 3.08.1 ratio.

[Anthony]

Ant, to me, the gold standards of close ratio mass produced trannys are the muncie M21/22 and the close ratio toploader, of which the muncie has closer spaced gears, I think 2.20/1.64/1.27/1.0 compared to the toploaders 2.32/1.69/1.29/1.0 . I did a search on the LeMans racing vipers/vettes, and couldn't find any specs on the tranny gears, but I did find that GM offers a road race T56 for the vette, only an over the counter $8000 option, for scca racing. The gear spread was 2.29/1.61/1.22/1.0/0.85/0.75 , which is a lot closer than what the T56 is offered in the street camaro's, vipers, vettes. To me, this is a true close ratio 6 speed, and is probably close to optimal gear spacing for a V8 powered mid sized race car.

If you got a custom 5 speed tranny, with the first 5 gears similar to this, basically a muncie/toploader with a 15% - 17% overdrive, I think this would be the best overall gear spacing.

As the jerico and G-force trannys have 5th gear as 1:1, you would have to adjust the muncie gear ratio's, dividing each number by 0.85, to come up with a 5 speed as can be offered/designed. So, 1st would be 2.59, second 1.93, third 1.49, fourth 1.18, and fifth 1.0 , and this should be fine with a 3.07 rear. If you want a 17% overdrive, then divide each gear by 0.83, so the rato's would be 2.65/1.98/1.53/1.20/1 , etc.