Cracked open 2 of my old T50 gearboxes today, one of them is a JDM AE86 box, the other is an ADM TA22 box.

 

The JDM box has 2 missing teeth off the layshaft (2nd gear, I think), and apart from that can't tell very much. However, the oil was replaced less than a week before it self destructed, and the oil that came out previously had lots of sparkles.

 

The TA22 box has lots and lots and lots of shiny sparkles. I replaced the TA22 box because it was making a hell of a lot of noise, and it kept popping out of gears all the time.

 

Both boxes seem to have lots of little scratches across the wear face, and both of them also seem to have a bit of corrosion on the gears and bearings. On the TA22 box it's so bad that you can feel it when it runs over one of the corroded sections. The faces of both boxes are also a little pitted and stuff.

 

I'll attach photos once they're uploaded.

 

Also, as I was picking up the main shaft from the TA22 box (and going "wow, that's so cool") it fell apart, and all these little bearings went EVERYWHERE! How do you put them back? They keep falling out of place again (and I don't even know if I found them all again...)

Grease is your friend. :D

Ah, but of course!

Here photos

 

All I want for Christmas are my 2 front teeth...

 

Starry starry night...

 

Rust, and if you look hard enough you can see the scratches on the wearing face

How on earth does corrosion get in there? It's full of oil?

from sitting for a long time with no oil in it?

Even then all the gears are still covered in oil...

Speaking to more knowledgeable(?) people on other forums, the general consensus seems that T50's just aren't strong enough, so it looks like it's time for me to upgrade to a W5x box...

 

This is like using a sledgehammer to swat a fly :D

No, no crunch. Wasn't even accelerating hard. Just driving along (in town) and started hearing lots of "clicky" sounds. Then noticed that the gearshifter was vibrating to the clicks. Got home, dropped the oil and found teeth.

 

If there was a big crunch when I was changing gears and that was when the gearbox blew up, then I'd know that it was my fault, that I broke the box. But no crunch, it just broke.

Previous gearboxes never "broke" per-se. They just started making a lot of noise (in 4th, then 2nd, then reverse), and wouldn't hold gears. Like, I'd put it in 2nd gear, accelerate, come off the accelerator and it'd pop into neutral. Same with 4th. Sometimes even when I came off the clutch it'd pop into neutral. And then everytime I drop the oil I just get sparklies galore.

No offence but it may be the way you drive. That's one explanation that comes to mind. You remember how I used to launch the trueno? That was a JDM T50 box. The only reason it went crunchy in 2nd and 3rd was because I had no clutch one night and kept racing.

I don't think I drive it any harder than you used to drive the Trueno... I mean, we were trashing the crap out of it at Qld Challenge...

 

The only thing I can think of is motorkhanas, because there's a lot of handbrake, dump clutch get wheelspin sort of stuff happening... Maybe I should stop doing motorkhanas... :D

Can u get strong gears for your gearbox i.e. titanium gearsets?

Not for any economically viable cost.

i think it's the boxes. you're using second hand boxes which people say "yeah it was good when i had it" which doesn't really mean jack shit. people say things "bolt in" too and they are far from that in reality

 

ae86 drifters are using JDM T50s, clutch dumping and lighting up the wheels constantly with good tyres and... well, i guess you'd have to find out if they're lunching gearboxes with stunning regularity

 

what do karl and the guys over on garagedori use? and how often do they break?

 

i think you need to spend $600 on a good quality rebuilt box and base your opinion of T50s off that. don't sit and wait for reardrive.co.nz to email you back, they took 6 weeks getting back to me, call them if you're serious about buying