Well after about a months of extra activity and whine from my gearbox its finally decided to go the whole hog. While driving to work today 4th gear sounds like a mixture of a thousand crickets and a thousand bolts rattling around inside. Every gear is whinning now with a slight rattle but 4th gear is about 3 times as bad.

Now the gearbox has covered 10000miles in 15 months and in that time has been rebuilt with a new set of syncro's. So!!!! it was built buy an ex Prodrive gearbox builder to PAR/Lateral's instructions, has always run the extra litre of oil that Mark recommends, has always run Redline shockproof which has been changed once and the car has never gone over the 380lb/ft yet as mapping/etc is still not finished, also for the last 4months the car has been given no-where near a good thrashing because my fueling has been running lean when the pump was failing and is now running too rich where i have a new pump and SX reg on the old fuel map!

So its quite easy to say this box has had quite an easy life, apart from 9 drag starts at Elvington last year when car was fully mapped on the 2litre, since then i have had to run in 2 engines and generally take it easy

What next then??????

I suppose i could get a useless reply from Lateral Performance denying any faults with their products that they sell

Or

I think i will try the later and put a STI5 or P1 gearbox into it

Scott
Anyone want to buy a nearly there car???????

 

Sorry to hear of your trouble Scott. The 6 speed does seem to be a solution, but the lower 4 gears are quite short for a torquey motor, especially if you don't have a high rev limit. There is an odd gap between UK 4th and 5th, but the torque of the 2.5 hides this fine, and you drop back well into the meat of the power band with any gearchange.

STi 5 or P1 could be good with the diffs changed. See if Pavlo can advise as he is sorting something out for our 2.5 Legacy project along these lines. Most experience with these has been on high power 2.0s, whether they'll take the torque delivery of a 2.5 I don't know. The Legacy is a disposable fun car, for a car you depend on I would be tempted to do the 6 speed again.

 

Thanks John, Still not sure on the 6speed! extra weight, gearing but mostly the cost. I'm fed up of spending money and not getting anywhere with it

The reason i say STI5 gearbox is?? Is'nt Bob Rawle still running a standard box with around 450lb/ft

 

Think he said in his project thread he was switching to 6 speed, although it has done him well. It only weighs about 20kg more than a 5MT, and the front diff was a pleasant surprise the effect it had on balance I thought.

 

I know someone else who will be sticking with the STI 5 spd box too. He will running plenty power, maybe more than yourself?, but he is expecting to have to rebuild it every once in a while. This cost will be slightly less in the long term, than any other idea....maybe. Basically, i've been told it is a lot cheaper to rebuild the old style boxes, compared to the new 6 spd STI jobby, but it might just be all a big pile of poo.

Good luck anyways bud.

 

could be bearing or diff failure if all gears are noisy.

drop the oil and see what is on the drain plug. there was flakes like tin foil on johns before it failed and a complete tooth when it went completely.

 

4th is definately the noisey one, it sounds like the bits of card you used to stick into your spokes on a BMX to make a noise. Diff is a Quaife so i would'nt of thought thats broke

 

Mine was ticking under load in 4th, that was the sound of it being minus one tooth. Suppose if you have the Quaife front diff already then that is one less advantage of the 6 speed.

 

all ive done is read about problems, has anybody managed to use them hard and have them last?

 

sounds like same failure as mine. I didn't bother whining and purchased a PPG 3-4 gearset, and reused the PAR 1st and second, which if you look after your current box may still be serviceable.

Paul

 

Ask Mark ??? All the Lateral Performance appreciation society seem to be having no problems at all



Not whining as such Paul, but people should know of the crap thats about! and why should suppliers get away with it and blame everything else apart from the products they sell!

 

Good job you never bought any BPM stuff then

sorry about yours probs..

how are you anyway you old fvcker?

 

The problem is that to begin with they're covered by a 6 month warranty from PAR...and after the latest episode they've changed their policy - and now a gearbox is only warrantied if it's been built by PAR themselves, or a builder that's approved by them.

I had my old (first PAR I built myself) rebuilt just, 1st gear had developed pitting on the input shaft causing a nasty noise.

As the gearset then was 1 and a half years old, I could do **** all about it - so I sorted a new 1-2 set from PPG (whose full on dog kit I'm running in my own car), and it went in fine.

Not tried it yet as I'm lacking a few bits to finish the car in question.

PAR definitely has a material issue, and a massive attitude problem, they tried to blame my failure on the builder (me).
As 1st a straight cut gear you really can't go wrong...this they agreed with...but changed their mind, and blamed the oil instead.

Naturally being a cautious fella I asked Haysam directly when I built it, which oil I should use, and if it needed a run in period.
...and I ran the thing with a high quality 75-90 GL5 (Motul Gear 300) by his recommendation...

Mark can't really be blamed for this, there's no way he can make sure every product he carries will whitstand the wear and tear of a year or so of hard usage....he can do little else but rely on his suppliers.

If they're shafting him, it's fairly unfair to attack him IMHO.

PAR on the other hand is definitely NOT in the x-mas card list.

/J

 

I bought from the supplier and as i can't deal with PAR its up to the supplier to do this! Why should a supplier sell a useless part When i paid out for the gearset it was supposed to be all singing all dancing when quite clearly its not

A gearbox that lasts 15000 miles of generally easy driving!!! come on May not be marks problem now but lets make sure no-one else buys this ****. If this thread or John's original thread was about then i would'nt of wasted what turn out to be 3 grand by the time it was fitted

Scott

 

I can understand your feelings, I've been there myself...but you're missing the point - it's not Mark that we should attack...
Do you in all honesty believe he carries out extensive testing for years on all products he sells?
...and basically the gearset has a 6 month warranty...PAR made sure to point this out to me...and I can't think Mark would get another answer.

PAR has decided that all mishaps are due to build errors, or in my case when I had a bit of knowledge about how things work - oil problems.

However, I don't think PAR will sell that many gearsets over here...even if all issues would be sorted...

/J

 

Scott : You could look at the gearbox as an expendable item and you can probably buy five STi 5 boxes for the cost of any after market gear set. I have had exceptional service from my STi 6 box which is now in the WRX but getting tired. The WRX box lasted a few weeks at 400bhp before it took out third gear.
Can somebody post a link to PPG please.

 

http://www.ppgearbox.com.au/

Excellent service, and nice products...which doesn't seem to have the same issues...yet...

/J

 

Scott,

If I were you I would go with 6 speed or some PPG set. Neither will carry a warranty, both are better than PAR. The problem with the PAR set is PAR themselves, I couldn't even get a price for the replacement parts to make the repair myself. Having purchased from PPG directly, their customer service is the complete opposite.

Most if not all the very early PAR sets have been okay, but mine was certainly a material/treatment problem, same failure mode as John Banks. The 1st and second gears remain to be fine though, even after numerous full on drag starts, while the original failure of 4th was doing steady pulls in 4th gear from 2500rpm. As it happens the engine was a 2.5 and it had a 20g turbo.

If you run round trying to aportion the blame, the only person that's going to feel bad is yourself. PAR are 100% unco-operative unless you send the box back to Oz, which costs only £100 or so less (for return) than a new 3-4th kit. As SAM says, they try and blame installation every time and will not accept their gears are poor, instead pointing to all the drag cars that use them (rigoli and the like). It is because of this, that Mark has stopped dealing with them altogether.

I would cut your losses, not drive on the box and hope that you only have to replace 3rd and 4th gear or just get a 6 speed.

Paul

 

I didn't realise a new 3-4th from PPG was an option and that's what you'd done Paul. At least there is something recoverable from the situation.

 

Dont make me ****in laugh!!!!!

Rob

U been listening to Shaggy again?

 

meaning Rob??

 

Harvey, think i will try the expendable option! Buy the time you have paid someone to take out, strip, add new parts then put back its getting near the grand mark again

choices choices choices

 

I just meant that i have read about most of your various failures as i am very interested in your progress and parts etc.. I get the Impression that you like to 'drive it like you stole it' as they say

No dig intended if that is what you thought...

Rob

 

Not at all Rob I do drive like a **** sometimes but not all the time you know

If you will read my first post you can see that most of the driving has been quite easy due to running in various engines and having more problems than i can be bothered with Who wants to buy it

 

Lol, i always think that!!!!!!!!!!

If it breaks sell it!!!!

I must say, Pavlo's PPG Kit does Fill me with a lot of confidence and is prob what i will buy when the time comes.

R.

 

I will have my gearbox apart in the next few months, so will get some pics of the (hopefully not very) abused PPG parts.

I do think the new age cars are going to give boxes more grief due to their increased weight.

But as I have said, PAR had teflon shoulders IMO and I was very happy not to deal with them, but do what you can to salvage 1st and 2nd gear prior to assesment.

Paul

 

Paul, do you mind me asking how much you paid for the 3rd and 4th gears?

 

Hi all
ppg also make very nice billet selector forks too, the par problems are well known down under rigoli used to break them often !! see ya Rob mac.

 

...got those in my PPG dog as well, went a bit crazy with the credit card.

/J

 

I think by the time I paid for full duty, VAT and delivery (via TNT grrr) I had paid about £1000 to my door for the 3rd-4th gearset. Mine is a straight cut, and I think 3rd is 1.32 and 4th is 0.95 bringing them a little closer together than the PAR 3rd and 3th. You can also get semi-helical gears. My PPG 3rd is also about 1mm wider than the PAR as the thrust washer used on the PAR 3rd isn't present, this may be due to the straight cut nature of the gears, although stock 3rd doesn't seem to have it either.

The quality of the PPG is definitely higher than the PAR, the edges are more thouroughly deburred, and the finish of the tooth flanks is much smoother, without the broaching marks present on the PAR.

PPG straight cut gears are much noisier than the PAR 1st (which is straight cut) I put this down to the increased backlash and different tooth profiles.

I had no problems fitting the PPG 3rd and 4th on the PAR input shaft with PAR 2nd gear. In fact Simon Pfitzner replied in his email remarking he had seen many people coming to them with PAR failures; "we hear this all the time" I think were his words.

6 speed with PPG custom ratios, now that would be nice, just need £6k + to do it though, Christian?

Paul