Opiebennett
XJ_Ranger
STaK offered a complete case for around $2200 and the empty case for around $800 in 2009 dollars based on my best memory.
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Midnight Metal Works T Case.
- Thread starter Billybadass411
- Start date
TRINDU
PBB Orphan
So buy a product and refuse to market it or sell it. Cant say it kept the competition from popping up. They're just sitting on their hands with that tech/info.
Stak and behemoth had/have far greater issues than quality control. The D300 moniker isnt the issue.
YotaAtieToo
Thick skull
They didn't only buy the D300 design, that was only a small part of the business.
Wasn't the only issue with the Stak that it would pop out of gear and they had too many out there to fix. If I remember right they pretty much went broke trying to recall them all.
Like I said, my buddy had the mini Stak and it's been great for almost 10 years. He drives to the trail and wheels pretty hard stuff, then drives home.
Wasn't the only issue with the Stak that it would pop out of gear and they had too many out there to fix. If I remember right they pretty much went broke trying to recall them all.
Like I said, my buddy had the mini Stak and it's been great for almost 10 years. He drives to the trail and wheels pretty hard stuff, then drives home.
vetteboy79
It's bent. #ttb
Only mechanical issue, yes. My buddy had a 3-speed and had to make a locking latch for the shifter to keep it in place, even after he sent it back for their 'fix'.
I had a long thread on the old board about why they were popping out and how Dana had solved it on the 300 vs Stak and JB (Stak used the 32 spline JB front in their 300 cases, and JB had issues popping out as well, Stak used the same design on their own cases with the same result and problem). They tried to solve it via shifter detents and fork design while Dana used a completely different design and process for cutting their shift collar teeth, something probably not practical for the comparatively small aftermarket output shaft market.
Some cases the detent/fork fix was enough, some not, probably due to tolerance in the teeth for the shift collar engagement, which is pretty sloppy.
Weasel
Red Skull Member
T Jordan had a stak in his Moon Buggy that worked. But yeah parts, support, and the popping out is what did them in. Seemed like issues that could be handled just fine with the new company. So it was pretty hit or mis.
vetteboy79
It's bent. #ttb
Another perspective.
Arguably yes, a fully aftermarket 300 will be nearly if not as strong as an Atlas.
I'd also argue that an Atlas (*if it were billet), Hero, or fully aftermarket 300 don't really have much difference in production costs, at the end of the day.
Why would you offer a $3500 product that costs nearly the same to manufacture, when you can instead just try to funnel everyone to your $4500 product that has very limited competition in a market that will probably pay it? You'd squash the cheaper one to remove it from the market, because at the time no one else was doing it.
Now if you're a manufacturer that doesn't want to do the groundwork to build a proprietary case, which is not TWF/Hero because they obviously wanted to go after Atlas specifically as a superior alternative, a 300 case makes a lot more sense.
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gt1guy
Apparently a racist
I assume the Rock Box is too new to have any failure reports floating around. There's certainly failures of every other case spoken about in this thread................except the Hero. Nobody has mentioned any failures of Hero boxes.
Is the Hero the top dog right now?
Is the Hero the top dog right now?
couple bearing failures when they first came out, mostly from KOH iirc
arse_sidewards
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I'm betting he stayed on the throttle in the air and the engine went from rev limiter to several thousand less when he landed.
People have split granny 4spd cases that way.
YotaAtieToo
Thick skull
If you Google hero tcase failures, they're out there. The cool thing is that TWF has reached out to them and offered to fix them, at least the few I found. Apparently they updated some stuff from the original design.
vetteboy79
It's bent. #ttb
The two things that turned me off when they first launched was no quantifying how strong it was (it's just 'more' than an atlas) and if you broke it, the case was sealed, and it had to be sent back intact and unopened for the warranty to be honored.
I understand both, my professional career is (was) industrial gearbox and power transmission design, but I also know that whoever they paid to develop that box definitely put some HP/torque numbers on it, and if I'm on a big wheeling trip or qualifying for a race, I'm gonna want to open that thing if it craps out rather than just say oh well, nice try, it's got a warranty.
YotaAtieToo
Thick skull
If you want to look at it the other way. Putting no Hp/tq limit on a warranty, as long as you don't crack it open is pretty sweet. What are you going to do anyway? Unless you have spare gears for that case, you aren't going to be fixing anything anyway.
What type of warranty does an atlas have anyway?
vetteboy79
It's bent. #ttb
Bent shift fork? Cracked shift collar? Internal set screw loosened up on the shift rail? Bearing preload loosened up? Maybe the low range gear is hosed but hi range is fine, so I'll clean the case out so it doesn't get worse and muscle through not having low?
Not saying you'd be able to fix everything, but if I drove 3000 miles to race KOH and something went wrong with the t-case while prerunning, you can bet my first reaction wouldn't just be "oh well".
edit: Plus, if I'd already busted an Atlas. I'd want to know how much 'more' is, because it's certainly not more than something like an SCS can do, and that'd be a big part of my upgrade decision going forward.
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YotaAtieToo
Thick skull
Fair points, but I don't think anyone racing gives a flying fuck about warranties. Most warranties are voided as soon as you enter a race anyway.
I guess I can see giving a rating over an atlas, but does atlas advertise a hp or tq rating? I guess I just take real world experience over a manufactures tq rating. Transmissions are a good example. The Zf5 in my F350 is rated for about 500 ft/lbs if I remember right. Yet guys have ran about twice that through them with pretty damn good luck. What's the point of a rating if it isn't really accurate? Not to mention, you might be able to run 1000 hp through a certain case in a mud drag truck, but a 250 hp rock buggy can scatter it guts. Hp/tq ratings are just to broad.
vetteboy79
It's bent. #ttb
Well that's the thing about Hero, they didn't void the warranty for racing, they encouraged it. It almost seemed like they wanted people to try and find the limits of it. Just, if you do happen to find a weak point, don't look at it, don't photo it, please just quietly send it back.
And I wouldn't care about a warranty in the moment, but if I did open it up and find it was something unrepairable or non-trivial that opening it up had nothing to do with, I'd be pretty pissed if they wouldn't honor that. Maybe they did, who knows, last interaction I had with them was years ago when the thing was first being introduced.
Ratings, goes like this (nerd hat on):
Any gearbox we designed would have a service factor applied to it for a given gear ratio and input horsepower (and derived output torque). At a service factor of 1.0, that represented an L10 bearing life of 10,000 hours - meaning, at 10k hours it could be expected that 10% of the bearings would be worn beyond tolerance. If oil was serviced and the box was rebuilt within that L10 interval, the gearing was considered infinite-life. Service factor scaled exponentially, to the third power - the same box, but with a 2.0 service factor applied to it, would have an L10 interval of 80k hours. Service factor of 0.8 would be 5120 hours.
All of those intervals assumed 16 hours per day operation (two shifts), a certain amount of start/stop cycles, turning in either direction, with a certain loading cantilevered on the output shaft, and the assumption that starting torque would be 250% nominal (an electric motor across-the-line), and a typical ambient temperature range of 0-40 degrees C. That was all basic catalog stuff. (edit: and yes, published in our public catalog, available to anyone)
If a customer needed something outside those parameters - say, a gearbox that opens a drawbridge once per day, so it only runs about 10 minutes at a time - we would revisit that with the specific use-case in mind, to the point where we'd be looking at the direction of rotation of the helical gears and the axial loading the gear cut causes. It might be that we could use a smaller box but have to substitute tapered roller bearings instead of ball bearings. Maybe it needs a doubled-up snap ring to retain the bearing. Point being, we knew down to the component level the life expectancy and limitations of every bit in those boxes.
When ZF says their 5-speed box is good for 500 ft-lbs, that's assuming that 1) it can transmit 500 ft-lbs, 2) most of its life will not be at 500 ft-lbs, 3) some of its life might be more, 4) somebody created a usage curve of what they figure the average life and loading of a pickup truck will be, 5) determined what the warranty window (life expectancy) would be, 6) decided how many outlier cases of early failure would be acceptable, 7) factored in marketing and competitor ratings to all of those things. They could've claimed 600 ft-lbs, knowing it wouldn't last as long, but banking on the fact that 95% of the usage would never get there anyway, and the remaining 5% more that failed could be covered by the additional sales of "my truck is more badass on paper than yours".
We would do complete, custom, from-scratch designs too. Like whoever TWF had design the Hero box. They would've done the same analysis, had figures for momentary and continuous horsepower limits (both thermal and mechanical), life expectancy, cost/benefit tradeoffs and ultimate strength. At some point, somebody figured out that x torque will blow the box up immediately, y torque every now and then is cool, z torque it'll last longer than anyone will care about, and all those pencil out to some input horsepower, depending on the ratio. Especially if they put them in military applications, like they claim, that would've absolutely been a published and required design spec. Military doesn't just accept "ours is better because we say so".
Because the average consumer would've stopped reading 5 paragraphs ago, I get why they didn't. Instead they just say Stronger! More! Raw power! High performance! 40 splines! without any quantification. Not even a %. And because of the last 5 paragraphs, and what I did professionally over the last 15 years, that just bothered me.
Sorry not sorry for the novel
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Interesting read, I wasn't aware of their "don't split the case warranty". Is this still how they operate? Or was this in the early stages of them developing the product, either way, I see the concern/issue with more competent/racing users.
Also, see some talks of bearing failure and bearing loads. Are all these cases running the same or similar bearings? I understand the I.D. with 32 spline would be the same but what about O.D.'s and widths? Also tapered vs. roller, etc. Bigger case could run bigger bearings so are they?
Also, see some talks of bearing failure and bearing loads. Are all these cases running the same or similar bearings? I understand the I.D. with 32 spline would be the same but what about O.D.'s and widths? Also tapered vs. roller, etc. Bigger case could run bigger bearings so are they?
YotaAtieToo
Thick skull
Well if you're super serious about racing, buy a spare case
I get what you're saying, I also get their reasons behind the "sealed" warranty. I'd venture to guess that if you did crack it open and ended up sending it back, they'd probably still work with you. They really seem to stand behind their stuff.
Ratings, goes like this (nerd hat on):
Any gearbox we designed would have a service factor applied to it for a given gear ratio and input horsepower (and derived output torque). At a service factor of 1.0, that represented an L10 bearing life of 10,000 hours - meaning, at 10k hours it could be expected that 10% of the bearings would be worn beyond tolerance. If oil was serviced and the box was rebuilt within that L10 interval, the gearing was considered infinite-life. Service factor scaled exponentially, to the third power - the same box, but with a 2.0 service factor applied to it, would have an L10 interval of 80k hours. Service factor of 0.8 would be 5120 hours.
All of those intervals assumed 16 hours per day operation (two shifts), a certain amount of start/stop cycles, turning in either direction, with a certain loading cantilevered on the output shaft, and the assumption that starting torque would be 250% nominal (an electric motor across-the-line), and a typical ambient temperature range of 0-40 degrees C. That was all basic catalog stuff. (edit: and yes, published in our public catalog, available to anyone)
If a customer needed something outside those parameters - say, a gearbox that opens a drawbridge once per day, so it only runs about 10 minutes at a time - we would revisit that with the specific use-case in mind, to the point where we'd be looking at the direction of rotation of the helical gears and the axial loading the gear cut causes. It might be that we could use a smaller box but have to substitute tapered roller bearings instead of ball bearings. Maybe it needs a doubled-up snap ring to retain the bearing. Point being, we knew down to the component level the life expectancy and limitations of every bit in those boxes.
When ZF says their 5-speed box is good for 500 ft-lbs, that's assuming that 1) it can transmit 500 ft-lbs, 2) most of its life will not be at 500 ft-lbs, 3) some of its life might be more, 4) somebody created a usage curve of what they figure the average life and loading of a pickup truck will be, 5) determined what the warranty window (life expectancy) would be, 6) decided how many outlier cases of early failure would be acceptable, 7) factored in marketing and competitor ratings to all of those things. They could've claimed 600 ft-lbs, knowing it wouldn't last as long, but banking on the fact that 95% of the usage would never get there anyway, and the remaining 5% more that failed could be covered by the additional sales of "my truck is more badass on paper than yours".
We would do complete, custom, from-scratch designs too. Like whoever TWF had design the Hero box. They would've done the same analysis, had figures for momentary and continuous horsepower limits (both thermal and mechanical), life expectancy, cost/benefit tradeoffs and ultimate strength. At some point, somebody figured out that x torque will blow the box up immediately, y torque every now and then is cool, z torque it'll last longer than anyone will care about, and all those pencil out to some input horsepower, depending on the ratio. Especially if they put them in military applications, like they claim, that would've absolutely been a published and required design spec. Military doesn't just accept "ours is better because we say so".
Because the average consumer would've stopped reading 5 paragraphs ago, I get why they didn't. Instead they just say Stronger! More! Raw power! High performance! 40 splines! without any quantification. Not even a %. And because of the last 5 paragraphs, and what I did professionally over the last 15 years, that just bothered me.
Sorry not sorry for the novel
Fuck man, I don't have 1/10th of that type of attention span.
Hero is yuge 40 spline outputs. I don't see it anywhere near the same level as the atlas.
Stupid side note, but I'd love a 3 speed hero with the 1.4 med range in my tow rig. Run 3.31s and then use the 1.4 for pulling heavy
it's only money right.
arse_sidewards
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Stupid side note, but I'd love a 3 speed hero with the 1.4 med range in my tow rig. Run 3.31s and then use the 1.4 for pulling heavy
NP203 range box actually pencils out well for rigs that have low enough power that they have no delusions about towing stupid heavy stuff at anything but slow lane speeds and doubling the input torque on everything downstream is still not enough to spray parts.
YotaAtieToo
Thick skull
2:1 would be pretty damn low, even with 3.31s and 35s
I don't ever forsee towing that ridiculous of a load really, but it would be cool to have the 3.31s for highway cruising than flip to 4.64s for BDL
I don't ever forsee towing that ridiculous of a load really, but it would be cool to have the 3.31s for highway cruising than flip to 4.64s for BDL
arse_sidewards
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2:1 would be pretty damn low, even with 3.31s and 35s
I don't ever forsee towing that ridiculous of a load really, but it would be cool to have the 3.31s for highway cruising than flip to 4.64s for BDL
dafuq are you talking about grandpa? It's not the 70s anymore. Shit can rev past 3k without exploding.
Most vehicles top out well over 100mph. If you figure that you don't need to BDL above 50-60 then 2:1 seems great since it lets you use the entire operating range of the engine/trans.
YotaAtieToo
Thick skull
dafuq are you talking about grandpa? It's not the 70s anymore. Shit can rev past 3k without exploding.
Most vehicles top out well over 100mph. If you figure that you don't need to BDL above 50-60 then 2:1 seems great since it lets you use the entire operating range of the engine/trans.
I'm talking about my 97 7.3. 3k is ok, but not much past that.
arse_sidewards
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Is it 2wd? Can you get 3.08s and 35s?
Ddcrawler
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He if anyone has any serious questions about the midnight metal works case let me know i help out at the shop. My friend Rob is the owner. Our case is 7/8ths wall thickeness.
We are big on customer service and trying to make products fellow wheelers like us want. We have lots of stuff coming. Doubler, the np205 case, we have our own gearsets with different ratios, adapters to different transmissions, Our own input shafts race version of our dana 300.
We are getting better supply of materials, all of our stuff is made in the usa the biggest things that have our lead times a 8 weeks is waiting on gears.
As far as putting hp limits on things is hard a guy that finesse crawls could make our our dana 300 case last behind 800hp. Where some people that full throttle assualt stuff could break it with much less. Those people we would suggest our np205. But anyone that is serious thinking about our case contact us discuss your build we try to point you in the right direction
We are big on customer service and trying to make products fellow wheelers like us want. We have lots of stuff coming. Doubler, the np205 case, we have our own gearsets with different ratios, adapters to different transmissions, Our own input shafts race version of our dana 300.
We are getting better supply of materials, all of our stuff is made in the usa the biggest things that have our lead times a 8 weeks is waiting on gears.
As far as putting hp limits on things is hard a guy that finesse crawls could make our our dana 300 case last behind 800hp. Where some people that full throttle assualt stuff could break it with much less. Those people we would suggest our np205. But anyone that is serious thinking about our case contact us discuss your build we try to point you in the right direction
Ddcrawler
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They are currently being designed for the dana 300. There will be beefed up stock 2.62s The exact ratios will vary but ball parking for 2 to1, 3to1, 4to1, 5to1. Also the option for 300m material. The np205 stock gears shipped to the gear engineer to day to develop gears for our 205 as well.
Nice, I've been pretty harsh to the idea of your case being a good option for a ground up build with only 1 ratio but you're starting to make me put my foot in my mouth, congratulations. Personally the price point would make me go elsewhere, just too close to the atlas and hero pricing but trail time and feedback could easily change that. Good job though, glad to see companies Inventing and not just reinventing.
Are these gears you're producing interchangeable with any 300 or 205 case (as in factory) or will they only work in your case? Very interested in seeing where you head with the 205 gear sets.
this along with a replacement case for the 205 is your winner
Ddcrawler
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Some of the gears will work other 300, 205 case but we have added room to the inside of our case designs to make jb conversions gear work without any issues. So some of the deeper ratios might not fit. One of the biggest things that keeps our price point where it is, is the fact we wont outsource our parts out of country like advanced adapters, this why there lead times on all their stuff is so long. We would love to see external dimensions on trail heros case just because you cant find them anywhere. See how our case may or may not package better.
Our np 205 will be the same height as a atlas and 1 inch wider. And is designed with clearance for jb conversions 3 to 1 which are huge compared to stock.
doing God's work