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Tonight as I was backing down the driveway in reverse, I blipped the throttle a little and all of the sudden the car came to a stop. I tried giving it more gas and it just died. Now it doesn't matter if I have the box in 'neutral' or forward, it only goes forward. If I put it in 'reverse', the engine just bogs down and then dies, no matter how much gas I give it. I pulled the trans tunnel cover and don't see anything amiss. The selector appears to move through the whole range of motion. Anyone have any idea what may be wrong with it?

--JOsh

It sounds like it's going into reverse but hasn't left forward yet. Both gears engaged at once.

Before this happened did you have a definite neutral gap between forward and reverse as you moved the shift lever? My small gold anodized Quaife has a lot of "neutral" between forward and reverse so I don't see how it could happen but it's a thought.

What I'd try as a test is put the main transmission in neutral and slowly rotate the input drive shaft back and forth as you slowly move the shift lever from forward to reverse. There should be some point where the input shaft rotates freely right after you come out of forward. On my car the neutral gap is quite large and I have a shift gate on the lever so it will not go into reverse until I move the gate out of the way.

Maybe look on some of the UK forums and see if that is a common problem.

_________________
"My junk is organized. At least is was when I put it wherever it is." -olrowdy
Completed building GSXR1000 CMC7, "Locouki"
Website: http://projekt.com/locouki/

Yes, I'd say it seems as though it's trying to engage both at once. I definitely had a gap between forward and reverse before this. Someone on the Locost List mentioned a similar issue w/ a transmission trying to engage multiple gears at once. Unfortunately, this means I'll have to cut a hole in the bottom of the car to get to the mounting bolts and try to pull the whole thing. Supposedly it'll be plain to see what's wrong once I open it up, but I'm not looking forward to that. I'm hoping for a cheap fix, as nothing else about these reverse boxes seem to have the word 'cheap' associated with them.

--JOsh

I found Quaife to be quite responsive to email. I asked what oil to use in mine and they answered very quickly with the info. They also sent me an engineering drawing by email when I asked about the mounting dimensions. So I'd give them a try first.

If not then hopefully you can find a picture on the web of what's inside to give you an idea of what might be wrong. Please post pictures of what you find etc so we'll have a reference from now on.

_________________
"My junk is organized. At least is was when I put it wherever it is." -olrowdy
Completed building GSXR1000 CMC7, "Locouki"
Website: http://projekt.com/locouki/

I emailed their general address from their website, but have yet to hear back from them. I've also tried doing a little bit of searching online to see if I could find any information on how they go together or anything like that, but haven't been successful as of yet. I will be sure to take pictures when I get it out to try and document what I find.

--JOsh

I was thinking that the Quaife may be similar to the Nova Racing box. ie dogs and gears and chains. Apparently it is is not. It would appear that the Quaife is a planetary gear setup. Here is a photo of an alleged Quaife internals:

http://www.locostbuilders.co.uk/photos. ... quaife.jpg

_________________
Chuck.

“Any suspension will work if you don’t let it.” - Colin Chapman

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That must be an earlier version than what I have. Although the internals might be the same. This is what mine looks like,



The shift plunger on mine is horizontal but it could just be a newer version of the vertical plunger. A funny thing about the reverse light switch is that it is ON when in neutral or reverse.

_________________
"My junk is organized. At least is was when I put it wherever it is." -olrowdy
Completed building GSXR1000 CMC7, "Locouki"
Website: http://projekt.com/locouki/

Interesting - I had/have no idea how they work.

My unit looks just like Olrowdy's.

--JOsh

Back from the dead...

After a busy fall and winter, I finally managed to get my reverse box shipped off in March to someone (Taylor Race Engineering) to take a look at it. Just got an email from them with a quote to fix it, and I'm looking at ~$1500 to repair it, or ~$1795 for a new one.

I don't see that sort of money laying around, so, trying to figure out what to do in the meantime. Any ideas/suggestions as to if I could build a small driveshaft to take the place of the reverse box so that I can at least still drive the car? I'm thinking I'd need some sort of stationary flange/holder with a shaft running through it and driveshaft flanges on each end.

--JOsh

I figure you have two choices,
1. Use one of your present drive shafts as is and find a car that has a two piece drive shaft setup to use the bearing in the [sort of] middle and have another drive shaft made up to replace the other unused (now too short) drive shaft.
2. Just make up one longer drive shaft and save the two short ones for when you get your Quaife working again.

I lean towards the split drive shaft with a center bearing. With some careful placement of parts you might be able to incorporate some sort of an electrical reverse using the stationary center bearing U-joint flange to mount a gear for the new reverse mechanism.

The new geared starter motors are pretty small and with some sort of luck you might find one that the Bendix gear would fit a gear mounted on the drive shaft. I saw some small gas powered Vespa like scooter at the junk yard that had a small starter motor and matching gear on the output of the transmission. I would guess the starter was probably too weak for a Locost reverse. If nothing else the larger gear might be usable with a normal geared car starter motor.

Go down the page in this thread till you see some pictures of a red frame with an electric reverse setup for ideas,

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4879&hilit=reverse

Also don't forget the drive shaft rotates pretty fast when running wide open so it needs to be balanced.

_________________
"My junk is organized. At least is was when I put it wherever it is." -olrowdy
Completed building GSXR1000 CMC7, "Locouki"
Website: http://projekt.com/locouki/

Rising from the dead again...

Got the box back from Taylor Race Engineering, decided there's no way I can repair it right now. I've been chasing down having new driveshafts made, but I'm looking at ~$600 for a new 2 piece shaft, trying to find something cheaper. At this point, I think I'm going to try to find a way to get a single splined shaft made to go in the box and bypass the gearing part of it so I can re-use my existing driveshafts.

Since I had no idea what the inside of one of these looked like, I took a bunch of pictures of it and thought I'd post it up in case anyone else was curious.







--JOsh

Thanks for the pictures. Did Taylor Racing say what exactly was wrong with the box, other than needing a rebuild? Bearing failure? Gear failure? Do you know how long the box was run?

If you look closely at this picture (click for bigger):

You can see that the sides of 3 of the gears are broke off, both sides on one, one side only on each of the other 2. And if you look close in one of the other pictures, the ends of those gears are 'welded' into the parts. I'm not 100% sure if all of the parts quoted on the repair bill HAD to be replaced, but in parts alone I was looking at $1200.

Not 100% sure on how long it was run, best guess would be 9k miles or less, as that is what's on the odometer and I believe it to be accurate from the 2 previous owners. I've personally put close to 1400 miles on it and it's currently sitting at ~8900 on the odometer.

If it weren't so costly to remake driveshafts, I'd probably go that route to make up 2 new shafts and make do w/out reverse. Next up would be trying out the Roadster cycle reverse unit, but that too requires new shafts, so quite a bit of the savings of the reverse box over the Quaife unit are eaten up in new driveshafts. If I were starting from scratch, I'd definitely go w/ the Roadstercycle unit.

--JOsh

Thank you very much for posting those pictures. I think they are the only pictures on the web of the internals of a Quaife reverse box.

I can't quite picture where the gold looking [output?] gear plate in picture #2692 goes. Could you lay the parts out in line from the input shaft to the output shaft (without the case or gold bearing holder plates) and take a detailed picture of that please? Slip the two end plates of the planet gear cage etc on the input/output shafts and lay out the cages between the shafts with the planet gears between the cages.

That would give me/us an idea of how the various parts rotate to give forward and reverse. In affect the cages that hold the 2 planet gear sets should be allowed to rotate or are locked to go forward/reverse and the two sets of 3 planet gears do the reversing when the cage is locked. Too bad it doesn't have synchro-mess (err mesh) instead of the dog clutch.

I can visualize all the gears and the cage but not where the output plate that is splined to the output shaft is positioned in relation to the cage and it's end plate (it ought to be inside the output end plate though). But it seems that the output planet gears would get tangled up with it if it is inside.

Is the longer stub shaft the input one?

If you weren't interested in repairing the box later it seems that it might be possible to weld the cage steel end plates to the gears on the stub shafts, leave out the planet gears and the shifting yoke and the welded up parts would act as a sleeve to couple the input and output shafts together. Of course it would permanently ruin any attempt to use any of the major parts inside the box to repair it and the welds would be questionable to the strength of the parts without heat treating afterward. AND the two shafts would have to be absolutely aligned and centered after welding.

I've arc welded the solid drive shafts of old Fords when shortening the chassis and they never broke with no heat treating etc. So it can be done if you are willing to take the longevity risk. I removed four FEET of the solid shaft and the torque tube (which was cut with a large plumbers pipe cutter).

Of course it would be simpler to have a new heat treated one piece input-output splined shaft made to just go straight through the box and then you don't have to worry about new drive shafts and all the alignment problems

Again, thanks for posting those pictures. And I really like picture #30 showing your innovative "last resort" emergency braking setup! What size anchor do you use for that?

_________________
"My junk is organized. At least is was when I put it wherever it is." -olrowdy
Completed building GSXR1000 CMC7, "Locouki"
Website: http://projekt.com/locouki/

Here are some additional pictures of how I believe it to go together, but I'm not 100% or even 75% sure I got it right...



As to fixing it, I've thought of just welding the shafts and parts together, but worry about their strength and longevity. I stopped by a local machine shop this afternoon to get a quote for a new splined shaft to go straight through, and I'm looking at $542 for one but he can make 2 for $322.50 ea, and if I go w/ a right hand thread instead of the current left hand, it'd drop to $466 for 1, or $282.50 ea for 2. Know anyone that wants one?

As to picture #30, that was my donor S10 chained down to the trailer when I brought it home, no anchor needed.

--JOsh