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PoorBoy Lenco/Sequential Tranny

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dyezak

20+ Year Contributor
100
1
May 22, 2002
Fredrick_MD
Ok, before my post a little history. Back in the late 60's early 70's in drag racing there was a new tranny to hit the market...the Lenco. It was the first sequential transmission of it's kind. Once this tranny came out everyone who used it would dominate their class because the clutch was only used to launch the car...all the shifts were done at WOT with just a pull of a lever. Shift times were in the miliseconds. Problem was these transmissions were very expensive (and still are, $20K for a sequential for our cars...Quaife).

Solution. Racers of the 60's quickly got around this problem by taking a TH400 (most commonly used trany in this aspect), put a manual valve body on it, put tighter bands and extra clutches in it, and (here's the wierd part)...PUT A CLUTCH IN IT INSTEAD OF A TORQUE CONVERTER!! It required a custom input shaft and modification (grinding) to the bellhousing but it worked flawlessly. It was able to compete with the Lenco's for a 1/10th the cost.

In the early 70's transmissions started coming with synchro's so the "PoorMan's Lenco" died out. Before that the tranny's had no synchro's and had to be rev matched to be shifted, thats why almost everyone used an automatic tranny, but as we all know...power loss through the converter...

Fast forward to today. Even though the DSM's have synchro's it's still a ##### to get that 1-2 shift without hurting something. And even then, once we are making decent power we must granny shift every gear to keep from replacing tranny's after every weekend. But our automatic bretheren don't have this problem...they have a different one...the crappy torque converter :barf: . Other than that they can handle full power full throttle upshifts in a 10sec car for 3 years completely stock (Russ Cox, 10sec automatic 96 AWD). Russ has used the same tranny for 3 years with no problems...other than a consistantly shitty 60' (2.0 range with 4 slicks).

If anyone see's where I'm going with this :thumb: .
 
>Other than that they can handle full power full throttle upshifts in a
>10sec car for 3 years completely stock (Russ Cox, 10sec automatic 96
>AWD). Russ has used the same tranny for 3 years with no
>problems...other than a consistantly shitty 60' (2.0 range with 4 slicks)


That is one point of reference… But did you hear that Brent Rau spend $20k on fixing his tranny during his last season of racing AWD Automatic? That was the reason why he decided to go “Buschur route” and build a RWD “tube” car :).

Perhaps those trannys are fine for the 10’s but they do not seem to work very well on a faster car… But in ether case, we are talking about just two cars here, so neither one makes a good statistical argument :(.

Leon
RR
 
I really have no intention of doing this...just bored at work and started thinking about drag racing in the yester-years and this popped into my head. Just thought it was a cool thought and worth bringing up incase someone with more money than me wanted a new toy.
 
Looking at the EVO VIII tranny specs:
Gear/#Syncros: 1/3, 2/3, 3/2, 4/1, 5/1, R/2
That should be a nice shifting gearbox.

Can't wait to testdrive one.. maybe swap trannys :shhh:
 
You can't use a gearbox out of any EVO newer than an EVOIII. When they went to the EVO IV they swapped the position of the engine and tranny (engine is on the passenger side now) for better weight distrubution (sp) and the ability to rearrange the input/intermediate/output shafts in the tranny for a stronger tranny. If you put the EVO IV+ tranny in a AWD DSM you would have 5 reverse gears and 1 forward. Not only that, but the X-Fer case would point towards the nose of the car...if it would bolt in at all...
 
And before anyone else asks, you can't use the Ralliart EVO III or older tranny (it is sequential and will bolt up). I mean, it will work and I have seen them for as little as $7k...but your top speed at 7500rpm in 5th gear would be 126mph...sux (stock is 176). Sean Glazer tried one for one pass down the track, revved it to 9000rpm and got to something like 146mph...it didn't work for him.
 
Not saying it would be a bolt-in.. (though I've seen some pretty creative stuff from DSMrs)... just that Mitsu is making great advances in tranny performance. I wonder if any of these internals will be available for our trannys.. either direct or TRE-modded?

Originally posted by dyezak
You can't use a gearbox out of any EVO newer than an EVOIII. When they went to the EVO IV they swapped the position of the engine and tranny (engine is on the passenger side now) for better weight distrubution (sp) and the ability to rearrange the input/intermediate/output shafts in the tranny for a stronger tranny. If you put the EVO IV+ tranny in a AWD DSM you would have 5 reverse gears and 1 forward. Not only that, but the X-Fer case would point towards the nose of the car...if it would bolt in at all...
 
cool idea- a clutch on an auto tranny. Eliminate the power loss and get reliable shifts. I wonder if the auto trans is more reliable just because the torue converter takes all the shock off the trans? How would it hold up to an ACT2900 doing a hard launch?
 
A seq shifter is tight! My VW buddy has wet dreams about this 6 spd tranny. It only cost as much as the car :rolleyes:
 
But wouldn't the very tall gears in an automatic cause you to bog down or slip the clutch a lot?
 
The best of both worlds is an aftermarket lockup torque converter. They have a clutch built into them. For a race only car, you could have the converter stall set to whatever launch RPM you want to build boost against(5-6k :D ), then lock the converter once you get into second gear

I guess the 2G trannys come with a wussy lockup from the factory, but 1Gs don't have one at all. Any 1Gs wanting to use a lockup converter would have to convert to a 2G auto trans.

Example lockup torque converter with upgraded clutch (DSM Performance Parts, Transmissions and Torque Converters):
http://www.fullthrottlespeed.com/

Seems like it would be the hot ticket for an 11 or 10 second 2G auto DSM.
 
The tranny of choice in the 60's was Chryslers legendary torqueflite.

Here is a pic of the "manual" auto. There were numerous companies that had them, but the most notable was B&M. Shown below:
 

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VW actually had what was known as an "auto-stick" back in the 70's. It had both a clutch AND a torque converter. The trans only had 3 forewards gears, but NO clutch pedal. The clutch was operated by an electric soledoid that was activated when you moved (or even touched!) the shifter. The solenoid would open and allow vaccum to pull the clutch back while you shifted. The torque converter was used so you could stop and go as you pleased without presing anything more than the brake or gas pedal. First gear was for speeds up to 30 mph, second gear up to 55 or 60, and third for anything faster. It was a neat idea, but a real pain in the ass to work on. I know this isn't really racing technology, but its interesting none the less....
 
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