[Lil' Lavery]

Speaking from experience having been on teams which made their own custom transmissions (with a manual mill and lathe) before the age of AndyMark and who have used COTS transmissions; the COTS solution is the way to go. The amount of hours invested in design and fabrication involved in the creation of a custom transmission simply aren't worth the minimal gains compared to the COTS solution for 99% of teams.

It's a good exercise to go through if you have the resources, time, and money. But in the condensed build season schedule, it's simply not worth the allocation of those resources.