I was wondering if you could heat treat or nitride a transmission gear set. I have a 97 Vette that I was thinking about rebuilding and sending out the 1st through 4th gear set to have treated. I spoke with the Tremec Tech Rep yesterday and he said that might be an option. What do you think?

 

Come on sombody has to know somthing?

 

The gears are all ready heat treated.

 

The harder you make them, the more brittle they will end up.

The gears aren't really a failure point for the T56 of any frequency. It's the synchros, mainly due to the lack of proper clutch release. Fix what's (most likely to get) broken, not something that's fine.

 

To improve gear strength you usually go the other way. They aren't heat treated, rather they are cryo treated. The extreme cold aligns the molecules in the material and improves the grain structure. This is becoming a more common practice with engine blocks and other high stress components. I have heard of people having the gears treated this way in cars where stronger repalcements are not available, or are cost prohibitive (for example the upgraded gearsets for my WRX are over $4,000, but the gears can be cryo treated for a fraction of that cost).

An easier option with the T56 in terms of gear strength would be to use a G-Force gearset. They are now available for the T56.

Typically, as mentioned, the gears are not a problem. The synchros are often fast wearing in the T56, and sometimes the synchro engagement teeth on the gears are damaged. One advantage of the G-Force gears is that they are a two-piece design that allows just the synchro engagement teeth to be replaced rather than the whole gear, saving a lot of money.

 

I know about the G-force kit. I have one for my camaro. Was looking for a cheaper way to go on my vette. Are the synchro's somthing that can be treated?

 

Not really. The Vette already has the best synchro technology for the T56. All of the upgrades convert other versions of the T56 to the Vette triple cone synchros. The problem is that the T56 is designed to be very smooth shifting, as it is used in some very high end cars (Vettes, Vipers, Aston Martins). The tradeoff with the smooth shifting is that the synchro parts tend to wear faster with performance use. Most often the synchro ring itself is not the problem, rather it's the engagement teeth on the gear. Over the years I've reaplaced a ton of synchro rings that looked brand new during a rebuild, and often found that one or more of the gears had damaged engagement teeth, which were causing grinding, popping out of gear, or poor shift characteristics. The only solution is to replace the gear, which isn't cheap in a T56 as I'm sure you already know.

Basically, if you want durable synchros they come at the price of harsher shifting, and often the inability to downshift without extreme mastery of heel/toe work. Dog ring sychros are very, very tough, but are exactly what I described above. They are great for drag cars, or dedicated road course cars where the driver is a professional race car driver and has the heel/toe skills to allow him to downshift the car. These are what the Viper leMans cars are runnign in TR6R, which is the designation of that version of the T56. Basically it's a stock case with totally revised internals, dog ring synchros, and a fluid circulating system that runs through a cooler. Very, very tough, and durable enough to take 750HP and massive V10 torque, but you wouldn't want to drive it back and forth to work.

 

Where do you get these "dog ring synchros"?

 

For a T5 you can get the dog ring sysnchro kit available through G-Force.

For a T56 I don't think you can buy a kit like this. From my conversations with Tremec it sounds like the race teams have their own gears made. To do this you need sliders, gears, and synchros that are designed to work together. If you are serious I would go to Tremec's website at www.ttcautomotive.com and email them. They were always very responsive when I emailed them in the past.

 

Yes I've beedn in contact with a Mr Kyle Forester. I have an "in" over a Mcleod and that's who they recommended. Kyle was also the one who suggested maybe treating my gear set.

 

Yes I've been in contact with a Mr Kyle Forester. I have an "in" over a Mcleod and that's who they recommended. Kyle was also the one who suggested maybe treating my gear set.

Billy.