[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

From my point of view, teams are getting a very good deal with $330 for a tried and true gearbox.

Do these numbers seem correct?

Andy B.

Couldn't have said it better. It cost us more to make our 2004 transmissions based on Andy's 2003 design than he charges for them. Plus we wasted a bit of money destroying parts debugging fit issues.

Our team has long been a fan of the buy it if you can philosophy. This limits the hassles and headaches with getting some transmissions to work on the first shot if you can't afford the time and cost to remake those slight fit issues you messed up on. The AndyMark is a simple and light as you can get for the value and 177 is proudly using them this year.

Just to give you some ideas in the past we have done the following canniblization of COTS trannys:
Adapted the KOP Bosch transmission to work with the FP motor in 2004. We parralleled the NBD but used kit material for it. Can't find the white paper on it that I posted.
2005 we used the transmission from a winch with both FPs driving it to raise and lower our arm. We could lift 3 tetras with it extended.
Edit: I designed a two speed using the 2005 KOP transmissions and some left over 20dp gears from from 2004s making of the Technokats 2-speed. This was so we could do it on the cheap when we had a budget crunch. :End edit

The jist of this is don't just think drive train or "FIRST" transmissions. There are a lot of inexpensive durable COTS transmissions that you can use with a little creativity.