Just overhauled my second T9

[James A]

For years we had a local source to service T9s here in Texas, but he recently retired, and I was getting little tired of gearboxes lasting less than a racing season so I decided to do my own overhauls. The first gearbox I did never wanted to go in to 5th and that was right after a very expensive rebuild. It turns out the company that did the work used the wrong 5th gear blocker bars and springs, yep the wrong ones! I recently finished my second box that had the 3rd gear synchro teeth broken off and I have to say it was very straight forward, I found really good parts support through Quantum Mechanics in Connecticut, and a lot of on line support info here: http://topdocsracing.com/pdf-links and with those two sources I dove in. The first box was a little slow and I had to redo some assembly work, but the second box was a snap. Now I am on to my third box which has one race on it and began popping out of third gear. I can see what is wrong but getting to the third gear will require that I disassemble the box. It's pretty amazing that I am doing in a few hours and for $200 - $300 what I was paying $1500 for, and it's fun.

Oh one other note, the largest supplier of T9 parts in the UK refuses to sell to the USA, it's really very odd, I even said I will have a freight forwarder pick up the parts and export them and they said they were not interested.

OK, next I am changing a differential ratio and installing a Titan LSD, I've found the shop manual and a parts source for the Ford7" diffs also.

[Driven]

How hard is it to separate the case?

[James A]

There is really nothing very hard about a gearbox overhaul, you must have circlip pliers, a 36MM 12 point socket, snap ring pliers, gear pullers, and the usual assortment of hand tools. You can download a shop manual from the link in my original post and it is pretty good except it does not cover some aspects of the heavy duty box. Take lots of pictures as it comes apart, use the manual and know that your first attempt will result in some rework.

Edited March 28, 2017 by James A

[simon450]

For years we had a local source to service T9s here in Texas, but he recently retired, and I was getting little tired of gearboxes lasting less than a racing season so I decided to do my own overhauls. The first gearbox I did never wanted to go in to 5th and that was right after a very expensive rebuild. It turns out the company that did the work used the wrong 5th gear blocker bars and springs, yep the wrong ones! I recently finished my second box that had the 3rd gear synchro teeth broken off and I have to say it was very straight forward, I found really good parts support through Quantum Mechanics in Connecticut, and a lot of on line support info here: http://topdocsracing.com/pdf-links and with those two sources I dove in. The first box was a little slow and I had to redo some assembly work, but the second box was a snap. Now I am on to my third box which has one race on it and began popping out of third gear. I can see what is wrong but getting to the third gear will require that I disassemble the box. It's pretty amazing that I am doing in a few hours and for $200 - $300 what I was paying $1500 for, and it's fun.

Oh one other note, the largest supplier of T9 parts in the UK refuses to sell to the USA, it's really very odd, I even said I will have a freight forwarder pick up the parts and export them and they said they were not interested.

OK, next I am changing a differential ratio and installing a Titan LSD, I've found the shop manual and a parts source for the Ford7" diffs also.

 

Good to hear it’s possible, I’m happy to rebuild the engine, but would be daunted at the thought of the gearbox. So far with lots of track-days I’m 3 years in on my box, I’ll keep my fingers crossed . Out of interest did you try Steve at SP Components / tracsport for spare parts. He provided the gearbox for my car in 2014. https://www.tracsport.com/

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[James A]

I did go look at the SP Components website, they have some nice bits and pieces, thank you for the reference. I am still using the original gearbox in my Caterham I built in 2002, with a lot of autocross and track days on it, I think the T9s are good in our application. We just had some questionable expensive rebuilds on the Caterham race car, I hope I have solved that by doing it myself. And, unfortunately the shop supplying parts, Quantum Mechanics went silent, simply stopped responding to e-mails or calls, I'm not at all sure what has happened. There is a supplier in Ft. Worth but man oh man they are expensive. Still working the UK angle to see who has all the parts and will ship to the US.

[TurboWood]

SP built my T-9. Hopefully it will be running soon so I can actually try it out!

 

Daniel