titanium top shaft

[PBR Allstar]

I recently stripped apart an old stealth out of my junk box and it had a really nice ti top shaft in it! I was curious who made them back in the day, and if they are still available? It came out of a trans that was in an old dirt oval car so maybe it was a D.O. manufacturer? or Robinson maybe?

[a01butal]

Hammad Ghuman made one.

[PBR Allstar]

are they a rare piece? worth using? It seems really well made, the gear is very smooth.

[a01butal]

I found one a while back still hanging on the rack but probably still somewhat rare, don't come up on eBay all that much. It's titanium so almost bullet proof.

[Charlie don't surf]

Robinson racing made them as well, If I remember right-the HG looks different than the Robinson, and the robinson ones shaft dia was a little small, and they wore out gears like crazy--if you post a pic of yours, I dig out the NIP robinson one to compare

[PerryCodes]

Do I have ANY chance of finding one of these? Don't ask me why... but I had a desire to set up an all-metal stealth transmission (w/ plastic spur gear... I'm crazy - not stupid). You can still easily find the hardened aluminum diff gear and after a couple of months of watching eBay, I was able to track down a couple hardened steel idler gears - all from Robinson Racing, but my AE steel top shaft might has well been made out of butter!

After about a 1/2 gallon of medium-speed running - most on the street / one day at the track - I opened up the transmission to see how things looked. The idler was in perfect condition. The diff gear and top shaft? Not so much! The edges of the diff gear looks like the "hardening" had started to chip off. Not extremely bad, but definitely not what I want to see... The camera I used sucks and wouldn't let me stay focused in order to take a decent picture of the diff gear. You can, however, clearly see the damage done to the top shaft.

So... Would a titanium top shaft hold up to such abuse? I see that all-steel top shafts were changed at some point to being a mix of steel with a plastic gear. Would that work better with the hardened steel idler? Worse? Is there any benefit to running the aluminum diff gear if I replaced the idler with the default plastic one?

Hopefully the three people that still use the forum are able to offer up some experience-based advice

Cheers ~ Jason

[klavy69]

Jason, Its an expensive gamble but mostly metal to metal is never good. I've done it as some of the locals when these were still available all with different degrees of success...if you can call it that. I'm actually surprised you got that much out of the topshaft! My best luck has been with a delrin idler between the metals. Yeah, you can strip them out but honestly you can wreck an all steel tranny just as fast...but with alot more bucks at stake.

Oh, and they are out there. I picked up a topshaft last week off ebay .

Todd

[jcwrks]

Unless you're shredding gears I would stick with the plastic idler.

[jwscab]

the plastic idler with metal top gear and diff gear would be the most efficient, strongest and maintanence free. if you decide for all metal you need some good lubrication that stays on the gears.