[Greg Needel]

The way that I would interpret this is that the gearbox as a whole is a COT as it is sold as a single item, regardless of the fact that it comes disassembled.

The assembly note in R27 deals with the assembly of more then one cots, or the assembly of raw/fabricated materials and cots. So if you were to assemble your AM shifters and put them on a test robot you would be fine to use them on your competition robot as long as they are placed on a new chassis and are un-modified as they are a single COT.