Did I post on here a month ago when the T-5 in my Fairmont blew apart? I don't remember. Fast forward to now; I ordered what comes down to a full-boogie helical G-force.
My question is this: have you driven a dog box on the street? Is it terribly unpleasant? Do you use the clutch? All the time?
The trans actually ships tomorrow, so I'm committed, but I'm just looking for some info.
I just did about 800 miles on the road with a dog box over the past 3 days. On my bike. Sorry, no other direct experience, but a guy on the Esprit list had a X180R with a dog box and he said it was a biatch to drive on the street. Of course, the dog box was probably only part of the biatch of driving a 4-500HP full on race car on the street.
its prob like any race transmission where it is going to have to be shifted hard to actually get into gear
I have never driven one, but I get the impression you commit to a hard and fast shift with one
I drove a friend’s Chevelle with a Jerico for a while and it needed to be shifted angrily every time. It got old in a hurry.
I have never driven one, but I get the impression you commit to a hard and fast shift with one
Yeah, and try not to switch between on and off throttle. 
Last time i posted in a thread on this topic people E36 M3 all over my opinions. My opinion being if you want your street car to drive like E36 M3, add a bunch of slop between your driveline parts. It'll be kind of like having bad u-joints and too much backlash in your ring and pinion, except it's on purpose now. At least yours doesn't have straight-cut gears too! Make sure and let us know how it ends up.
I was thinking "bikes do it all the time" when I made the decision. All of the rod ends in the rear make sure I notice every on-off throttle movement or misfire. Another big part of the decision was the fact that my engine penalizes me every time I shift too slowly. I hope that my choice plays into my car's penchant for being an shiny happy person.
Guys who did One Lap with a dog box sequential said the single worst part of the car was the transmission. And that was in a car that had to stop and add fuel every 60 miles. So between stopping every 45-50 minutes on a 10 hour drive and living with the noise and gear lash, they would pick the stopping. That put it in perspective.
Having said that, I look forward to your experience because it still sounds like a reasonable idea to me.
We built an Alfa GTV with a quaife 6 speed sequential dog box. It was a riot but had to be driven aggressively. I couldn't imagine living with it all the time. It was a struggle to make smooth low speed shifts. The straight cut gears were like sitting next to a cement mixer.
The customer specifically stated that he didn't want another one for the next car.
My problem with most manuals available these days is that the synchros suck. So even if your dog box semi-sucks, it is likely better than most synchros.
My experiences with Hewland and Staffs dog boxes were that you could shift gently only if you used the clutch, and they have no noticeable extra slop on account of the dogs. Your helical gears take care of the noise issue, so I think you will enjoy it. I also found that using the clutch greatly increased the life of the dog rings, at the expense of very slightly slower lap times. Dog rings are consumeables with Hewland and Staffs boxes.
My street/strip car has been faceplated for around 12 years. During casual driving i double clutch to save wear/tear on the dogs. When accelerating briskly I "single clutch" and shift with a bang. The big cam + extra gear lash makes it want to buck a bit at low speeds, but i have a switch on my retard box that allows me to pull 10 degrees or so if I want to calm it down. I did the faceplating myself, basically modified Liberty TKO parts to fit my Toploader 4spd. My 355 goes over 9k on occasion, so the dogs are a necessary tradeoff that ensures that i never have to worry about missing a shift or being blocked out by synchros.
Hers a pic from a few years ago before i replaced the faceplate parts. You can see where the nice sharp leading edges of the dogs have been rounded off quite a bit on 2nd gear...
Grant
mazdeuce - Seth said:Guys who did One Lap with a dog box sequential said the single worst part of the car was the transmission. And that was in a car that had to stop and add fuel every 60 miles. So between stopping every 45-50 minutes on a 10 hour drive and living with the noise and gear lash, they would pick the stopping. That put it in perspective.
Having said that, I look forward to your experience because it still sounds like a reasonable idea to me.
The rearend in the RX-7 that I am driving to work today (and spent ~500mi in this weekend) has about 3/4 rotation of the driveshaft worth of lash thanks to the Locker. I was worried about it when the rearend was more of a working theory than anything else, but you hardly notice it on the road. Or on course.
The gear whine is the annoying part, because I couldn't get a good coast side pattern. After the National Challenge next month, I'm going to try valve lapping compound on the gears to get the coast side to form a pattern.
If you can drive an unsynchronized trans, you can drive a dogbox. You don't have to shift like the trans insulted your momma if you match revs.
After driving a truck all day (DT366 dual range 9 speed) I have to remember to use the clutch in a car. Of course rev matching a diesel is much easier. So is a dog box in a car similar to a truck where there is a sweet spot in the rpm range and other areas are more of a challenge?
In reply to akylekoz :
I would think a sequential would suck because you can't pause in the neutral gate, but I could be wrong.
weedburner said:My street/strip car has been faceplated for around 12 years. During casual driving i double clutch to save wear/tear on the dogs. When accelerating briskly I "single clutch" and shift with a bang. The big cam + extra gear lash makes it want to buck a bit at low speeds, but i have a switch on my retard box that allows me to pull 10 degrees or so if I want to calm it down. I did the faceplating myself, basically modified Liberty TKO parts to fit my Toploader 4spd. My 355 goes over 9k on occasion, so the dogs are a necessary tradeoff that ensures that i never have to worry about missing a shift or being blocked out by synchros.
Hers a pic from a few years ago before i replaced the faceplate parts. You can see where the nice sharp leading edges of the dogs have been rounded off quite a bit on 2nd gear...
Grant
How many miles on that trans, and how many passes?
Did you do that cool w/c t5 trick, replace the stamped layshaft bearing retainer with the upgrade? I did on my t5,and my engine only puts out 227 hp. The upgrade retainer is good to 500 hp
I've driven a Jerico. In neutral, clutch in, BANG into 1st. Then pull off the line, foot OFF the clutch, BANG speedshift into 2nd, BANG repeat as necessary. Clutch is used only when stopped. Would get really, really old really fast on the street.
I wouldn't have been upset if first was synchronized, cuz it's not like I'd ever go to first in anger.
snailmont5oh said:weedburner said:My street/strip car has been faceplated for around 12 years. During casual driving i double clutch to save wear/tear on the dogs. When accelerating briskly I "single clutch" and shift with a bang. The big cam + extra gear lash makes it want to buck a bit at low speeds, but i have a switch on my retard box that allows me to pull 10 degrees or so if I want to calm it down. I did the faceplating myself, basically modified Liberty TKO parts to fit my Toploader 4spd. My 355 goes over 9k on occasion, so the dogs are a necessary tradeoff that ensures that i never have to worry about missing a shift or being blocked out by synchros.
Hers a pic from a few years ago before i replaced the faceplate parts. You can see where the nice sharp leading edges of the dogs have been rounded off quite a bit on 2nd gear...
Grant
How many miles on that trans, and how many passes?
The top pic was around July 2011, bottom pic was around Aug 2016, so about 5 years of summer driving. Closest track was about 170mi away, it made the trip about twice a month during the summer months. In Aug 2016 i installed new faceplate parts on 2nd gear and turned around the 3/4 slider to put the sharper edges on the accel side of the dogs. At that point i also adopted double clutching for casual driving. I had the trans out about a month ago when switching to a different clutch, edges of the dogs are still in excellent shape. This car is the test bed for my ClutchTamer and HitMaster clutch control products, so it gets plenty of abuse.
Grant
snailmont5oh said:I wouldn't have been upset if first was synchronized, cuz it's not like I'd ever go to first in anger.
I left the 1st gear synchro in mine so i could slip it into neutral at a stoplite and then quickly engage 1st without the bang. One of my clutch setups uses a full face sintered iron disc, 10.4" dia that weighs 5.3 lbs. It would take quite a while for that disc to spin down without a synchro.
Grant
Some people's hell would be my heaven.
Driving a dog box isn't dissimilar to driving a big truck box; keep in mind I've not driven a sequential dog box only the traditional H pattern but it would be manageable on the street. It would require a lot more thought than a regular box in traffic.
Also, what oil does the hive recommend? I always thought that T5s used ATF to help the blocker rings work. Since this doesn't have those, does it use gear lube? What weight?
On edit: Fifth gear is still synchronized, by the way.
If 5th is still synchro and you don't have super tall rear end gears i think you are actually going to be pretty ok. In casual driving with good low end torque a lot of cars can use 5th at 35mph or even less, so the majority of your driving will be in a gear with no extra 'lash'. Sounds good enough to me. The synchro 1st would be nice, but oh well. As far as spinning the clutch disc to zero, you can do that by shifting into 5th then into 1st at a stop. Maybe a little unnatural but also not really necessary unless you needed to stop and start in a really short time. Most people's clutch discs are closer to 3 lbs than 5+ anyway.
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