| Author |
Message |
Merlin Bennett (Mobennett) (205.188.196.28)
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 23, 2002 - 1:30 pm: | |
Does any one have part numbers or supplier for the 4 1/9th:1 highway gears for the GMC RTS.
Merlin |
Gary Stadler (Boogiethecat) (68.7.217.217)
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 23, 2002 - 3:04 pm: | |
Brings to mind a fun story, true story because I saw it with my own little eyes...
A guy back in the 70's (when there was no internet to help find things) had a similar bus and needed a gear as you do. Couldn't find one anywhere. He looked and looked, and finally gave in to SOP engineering... he scrounged the junkyards and finally found a gear that was "almost" right... it was the correct number of teeth but about 1/4 inch too small in diameter. He brought it home, turned a taper into it's inside diameter on his lathe, and made a matching tapered shaft that went from the "new" inside diameter of the gear to a diameter about 3/4 of an inch larger. Then he chucked the shaft up in his lathe, heated the gear up to cherry red, crammed it on to the tapered shaft and kept cramming it further up on the taper until it had actually stretched out to the correct diameter!! Then he took it off (after it had cooled), remachined the ID to be proper for his tranny mainshaft, set it up in the tranny, globbed a generous helping of rubbing compound on the teeth and turned it at a few hundred RPM with an electrical motor for a few hours until the teeth had honed themselves to the proper shape with the existing tranny gears.
Finally, took it all apart, heat treated the new gear, cleaned out all the rubbing compound and had himself a nice new gear of the right ratio... It worked perfectly!
Goes to show you what can be done when you have the balls to do something crazy!!! I've remembered this many times in my life when I thought I was up against a wall...
Cheers
Gary |
wally and (66.37.241.166)
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 23, 2002 - 8:28 pm: | |
A tall tale to suit taller gears |
jmaxwell (66.42.92.140)
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 23, 2002 - 11:36 pm: | |
Start hitting the bus junk yards and scrappers. 4 yrs. ago I got mine from a large transit dealer in Riverside, CA. Cost was $400.00 Couple of yrs. ago an acquintance got his from Zackers in Harbor Cty, CA (A bus salvage yard). Grumman, AM General, and Flyer used the same rear-ends. The 4.10 gear sets are getting harder to find and are currently running about $1k for a good set, last I heard. They are Rockwell (now Meritor) and are available new at about $1800 for the gear set only. |
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