The Price of Transaxles - Why are Transaxles Expensive?

[BruceLambo]

Originally Posted by crash33

The R&P is usually part of the idler shaft on transaxles. Some of the Hewland and VW boxes use a removable pinion crown gear, but if strength is desired, usually a splined shaft with changable gear sets is used that incorporates the pinion gear as an integral part of that shaft.

Are you talking about using a set of drop gears to adjust final ratio with the splined gear on the end of the "secondary shaft"? Drop gears, while very easy to incorporate in a standard box by splitting the main shaft, are rather difficult in transaxles. Usually a third shaft is required.

I think there is a bit of lingo confusion as to the labeling of shafts. Secondary shaft as I mentioned would be the output shaft, the one with the pinion gear on it.
Yes, it would be very easy to do this but if you had a 3rd shaft with an intermediate gear on it, you would wind up with 5 reverse gears and 1 forward gear. (if it was a 5 speed box)

The idea of the 'drop gears' is very easy, on the input/primary/firstmotion shaft, the end is splined - onto which say a 1:1 gear is placed. The other connecting end of this gear is placed on the output/secondary shaft below it.
This idea would only work on what one may consider 'conventional, non transaxle gearboxes that have the 'layshaft' type of gear setup so the gearset can revolve freely around the secondary/output shaft.
This would make a very short transaxle, that also would have 'quickchange' ratios available as well AND using most any sort of hipo gear box that is available.

[Eric]

Wanni speaks the truth. You cant have cake and eat it too.

A small volume run of casing, R&P, or any other component carries a huge initial cost. There is no way around this.

A gearbox is a component that sees very high load and temperature, and must have ultra tight tolerances throughout of every component. Design and manufacture have no room for error.

Making it overbuilt and robust is one way to help this, but if you are talking about sportscar and racing boxes, it must be weight optimized, this costs more time and money to be right, and it must be right.

In professional racing currently, no component is harder to develop and more critical than the gearbox.

the prices of boxes available for the component car market are certainly tough to swallow, but its an absolutely necessary evil.

Some guys are always convinced there is a way around it, and end up with broken parts time after time.

cheers
eric


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[Jac Mac]

With reference to post#69 when I raised this very point with Wanni, he raised some side issues that are relevant to this discussion.
1. He ( Wanni ) stated that he has around seven or eight clients who may each purchase anything from ten to twentyfive units ( Transaxles) per annum. This means his annual production could be anything from 70 to 200 , and as he has around five different models if not more the actual volume of parts is relatively small.

2. In that #69 post if I read it correctly he made the offer to anyone to purchase the rights to one of the obsolete models should they wish to produce it.

3. He states that he doesnt wish to do so himself for the simple reason he doesnt need phone calls from all corners of the globe because Jimi Whatsit has fitted this trans to his 1959 Goggomobile & decided in his wisdom to use recycled sperm whale oil & cannot get second on a quick downshift.--sorry, but I am sure you know what I mean.

While Eric states that current purpose built transaxles are expensive due to the limited numbers, this gets away from the point of building a transaxle using currently available off the shelf components from volume produced gearbox & or rear axle assys. There is or should be no need to even consider getting special R&P sets cut or machined. At most all that is need is a couple of shafts and a set of housings in which to install the parts. This is not going to be a demon lightweight /just strong enough to do the job/ specialist reqd to assemble type effort-- It would be a tough-simple-4 or 5 speed H pattern shift trans based on USA basics. Why use Porsche or other semi exotics as a basis when the core prices are so high & indeed if you have to buy new parts to overhaul them its often less expensive to buy another SH trans & hope its OK. I believe this would satisfy 80/90% of replica builders of GT40 & T70 type cars. The guys who want sequential/paddle shift etc would just have to pay the extra for their dreams.

[Howard Jones]

High demand in relation to supply = high cost. Read this. When the Tulip Bubble Burst