Albins carnage

Is that 95 degrees in Celsius?  If it is 95 degrees Fahrenheit; seems like it can reach that temp just sitting in camp in the sun........

 
Fullthrottleguy said:
Not saying 95 is not possible, but it seems really low. I am not sure where you are measuring the temp from or what you are using to measure it Admittedly I do a lot of Weddle S4  and S4D cars but I have seen the same 3/4" x 16 Trans switch used on the filler. ON the Weddle (Mendeolas) I wish I could get oil temp below 180 all the time.  One my personal car  I measure trans oil temp and about 10 minutes into every run the trans oil would get above 180, but I was reading the oil temp with the sensor in the oil all the time.  I use the Weddle/Turbowerx exa-pump on every car and I am sure it would blow the fuse if it tried to pump cold 190wt, but maybe not. I think maybe its because I always run a Setrab or CBR Cooler with the pump and they do have some restriction.  I know people run the Tilton diaphragm pump on the differentials dead cold, but they are not geared pumps.. and I am assuming the Fortins with internal pumps run dead cold too.   Have you asked Weddle whether to use a thermal switch or not?
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Danzio installed the temp sensor in the lower half of the nose cone area of the trans. 
And I agree it seems low. So I checked it with a infrared gauge on just the side of the trans and it was close. I did email Danzio about the low temps when I first got the car but never heard back.

I have talked with Sean about the temp sensor and he prefers it to be used to be easier on the pump.

 
1newbie said:
Is that 95 degrees in Celsius?  If it is 95 degrees Fahrenheit; seems like it can reach that temp just sitting in camp in the sun........
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I thought the same and so I double checked the settings in my motec screen to be certain. It’s set for Fahrenheit..

I haven’t been in hot temps with the car yet. Highest temps I’ve seen is abut 70.

Having that low of temps don’t make sense to me either.. 

 
Weddle is done with the rebuild. Sean sent all the information over to Albins to get another opinion, and they agree that it is a lubrication issue.

However it is very interesting to read where they believe it may have happened.

I asked Sean if it was ok to post it here but haven’t heard back from him. While I don’t think it will be an issue I would rather get approval prior to doing so.

Its worth reading and will change some of the thoughts or blame if you will.

 
I ran a sequential albins with no pump for years in my Tatum prerunner with no issues at all. It had over 1000hp to the wheels and was fine. You’re trans didn’t wear out because of the wrong weight trans oil. That’s a joke!! Something else is wrong. Adding a pump won’t cool the oil either but will spray oil on the gears if done correctly. On a sandcar there’s really no need for a cooler. 

 
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I have 3 cars in camp from all with albins 800-1200 whipple 4.5 No pump, clutch kicking all the time, and going on 7 years with same gears, 

My S4D has a little bigger gear than a S5D and Albins,  454 no pump and gear stack is 6 years old, and put them back in NO pump,  

Brother car 2 years on same gears No pump 2D,  Had it rebuilt for safe measure, with new 1-4 gears   made it 2 miles,  eat 2nd and 3rd,   put the old gears back in it with the same oil strained and its now ben another 2 years    

 
Now that I have completed everything with the customer, I'll chime in. I would typically respond to this type of thread earlier to try and curb any of the mis-information that gets posted, but I wanted to ensure that we had all of the information at hand before posting a public response.

The customer contacted me a few months back saying that his new Albins trans was making noise in 3rd gear, and that noise was getting progressively worse with use. This was a brand new car with a high powered engine (1000-1100 HP). I explained that any noise that gets worse with use usually means that something is going wrong inside the gearbox and should be remedied soon before a complete failure occurs. 

Since the gearbox made noise from the time the customer took delivery of the car, he is under the impression that there is some sort of manufacturing defect and could be cause for warranty, rightfully so and I fully agreed with him, but explained that we will not know for sure until we get the gearbox here for inspection, and cannot guarantee that this will be covered under warranty until that happens.

The customer dropped the gearbox here in person, which was nice so I could show him a few things on services in process that could be happening. We were not in a good position to be able to tear into the gearbox while the customer was in town, we got the trans apart the following week.

The pictures posted are pictures I took to show the customer what we are seeing as we inspected the parts. Between Ron Weddle and myself, both our first thoughts are that we are looking at some sort of oil issue. The fact that 2nd-5th gear all show the same type of wear leads us away from any type of manufacturing defect as it is almost impossible to have all of those gears which are heat treated in different batches to all be defective.

There are many factors to consider for oiling issues:

  • Type of oil.
  • What weight.
  • What GL designation.
  • How much oil was put in the gearbox.
  • How much oil was drained from the gearbox after use.
  • How hot the oil may have gotten with use.
  • Vent location that could cause oil to be "pumped" out of the gearbox with rotation of gears near vent fitting.
  • Restrictions within the gearbox that could cause oil to get trapped and not circulate properly.
  • Circulation pumps and proper sized fittings.

All of these factors were considered when inspecting the gearbox. The customer gave us the information on all of the above. Our best initial determination was that either the oil itself did not perform properly, or if the oil got too hot at some point and broke down. The oil used has not really been known to be problematic, and the customer stated that the trans temp was never recorded to be too hot.

I personally sent an e-mail to Albins with all of the above information and pictures to collect their thoughts. One of the owners of Albins who is also one of the lead engineers/designers responded with the same thoughts that we had, along with another thought that we had not really considered specifically with the Albins.

The customer stated that the car was run on the dyno for an extended period of time for "break in" on both the trans and engine, this was recorded with an extra 100 miles on the odometer. Albins thought of the possibility of running these gearboxes at a constant speed for an extended amount of time can cause the rotation of the ring gear to pull oil through the passage ways between the diff housing and gear housing, essentially starving the gear stack of oil. The oil passage ways are not very large between chambers (on purpose), which allows for oil to flow around, but not move around so much that it reduces the oil level in any one chamber by too much. Under normal driving conditions, there will always be a need to slow down after accelerations where the negative G's allow what oil has been pulled through to flow back into the chamber it was pulled from, so there really is no effect on how much oil can stay in the diff chamber. But, on a dyno for extended periods, the rotation of the ring gear will always be pulling oil through the housings, effectively overfilling the diff cavity and not allowing enough oil to transfer back into the other housings. 

I must note that we do not have any hard proof that the above situation is in fact what caused this issue, but it makes the most sense based on the information at hand. I believe that there are a few other factors that led to the excessive wear on the gears, but I cannot say with any certainty that they are the main cause. 

My thoughts on running external pumps are still the same. I don't think that Albins transaxles need a pump as we have many customers without them that do not have any issues. I believe they are quite useful and should be used on a variety of other gearboxes, but are not required. Many sand car owners have all told me the same thing, that they rarely drive long enough and hard enough to raise the temperature of the trans to 150ºF where the pump will actually kick on with the temp switch.  

My thoughts are that this was a total one-off situation that we have not run into before. This problem probably would have been avoided if there was a pump being used, that might have to be a factor in how I respond to future questions about installing pumps going forward. 

 
Thanks for laying it out there Sean! If in the end someone else is saved this hassle and cost because of this post, then at least I have put more than my two cents, literally, forward for the betterment of our hobby.

Glad she is on her way home though, Idaho is calling my name!!

 
This sounds like the " I have never seen this happen before" that we have all been told at least once in our life.  Sucks that you have to foot the bill.

Also, I would imagine that their has been plenty of these Albins on the dyno for the first time that actually survived.  I would think at minimum Albins would supply the parts for rebuild. 

 
SLIM said:
This sounds like the " I have never seen this happen before" that we have all been told at least once in our life.  Sucks that you have to foot the bill.

Also, I would imagine that their has been plenty of these Albins on the dyno for the first time that actually survived.  I would think at minimum Albins would supply the parts for rebuild. 
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To be clear, we have had issues with transaxles on the dyno more than once, but with different outcomes. We believe most of those failures we were due to running a full pull in 3rd gear, which may have pinched off 4th gear in the stack and seized them up. But now that we have some more insight on what is happening to the oil in the trans while on the dyno, this might lend to other theory's on those failures. This has mostly happened on race units, not much on sand car builds (although they are the exact same gearbox).

This situation is the first time we have seen this sort of wear and tear on all of these gears. This is also the first time that I have heard of a tuner actually running the car on the dyno for that kind of extended period of time for a break in process. 

 
Sean@Weddle said:
This is also the first time that I have heard of a tuner actually running the car on the dyno for that kind of extended period of time for a break in process. 
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The customer stated that the car was run on the dyno for an extended period of time for "break in" on both the trans and engine, this was recorded with an extra 100 miles on the odometer.
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Sean, if you dont mind sharing, what is "an extended period of time"?  was that 100 Miles (which could have been 50 to 100 minutes)? 

Im just tryin to learn.  As always, thanks for the input & insight into "all things geared". 

Bob

 
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Bobalos said:
Sean, if you dont mind sharing, what is "an extended period of time"?  was that 100 Miles (which could have been 50 to 100 minutes)? 

Im just tryin to learn.  As always, thanks for the input & insight into "all things geared". 

Bob
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Bob there was about 150 miles on the odometer when I got the car.

 Danzio  had to dyno two different tunes into the car as I had them do a pump gas and race gas tune. That along with a baseline wastegate tune adds up.
But they weren’t ran on the same day as fuel had to be swapped and I know it was over two days as he kept me informed.

 
Sean in a perfect world what would you like to see on the dyno for the trans,   just asking i have Turney car in the shop with a new trans and it will got to the dyno later, and seeing what your thoughts are on this,  Most have said the dyno is really hard on these Transaxles,   Is it bad to over or under fill them, should you change the fluid after they dyno,  I know on the motors the oil gets changed after start up then after the dyno to help clean the internals.

 
Is there something different about 100 mi on a dyno vs 100 mi at redline in a race? 

I don't think I've ever heard of other transaxles eating themselves on the dyno, but I don't repair transaxles. I just don't ever recall hearing anyone talk about trans failure on the dyno. Is this more common than we think, or is this a rare occasion? Have you seen this kind of thing happen to other trannies?

I'm kinda concerned. Albins has a rep as being the toughest trans available, yet this one didn't last 500 mi. Assuming it was properly assembled, it didn't have defective parts in it, how can someone else prevent this very expensive failure from happening to them.

 
J Alper said:
Sean in a perfect world what would you like to see on the dyno for the trans,   just asking i have Turney car in the shop with a new trans and it will got to the dyno later, and seeing what your thoughts are on this,  Most have said the dyno is really hard on these Transaxles,   Is it bad to over or under fill them, should you change the fluid after they dyno,  I know on the motors the oil gets changed after start up then after the dyno to help clean the internals.
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I can't say that most dyno sessions would ever cause this sort of issue. I think that most tuners will run a 5-10 minute warm up, then run a few full pulls to get data. During the time the tuner is making adjustments, the car would typically just be idling and the oil pulled into the diff housing will have a chance to refill the other chambers between pulls. Even if the trans is in gear while idling on the dyno, I don't think there would be enough "pull" from the ring gear to drain that much oil from the gear chamber. Plus, the gears would not be under any real load as they just rotate with the engine speed. 

I think this is where the difference in the type of session that we saw on this particular occasion. The constant speed (or even variation of speeds over a long period of time) used to break the car in on the dyno for the amount of mileage appears that it was enough to drain the gear section to cause the issue. The difference in running the car at 2000-4000 RPM for 30-45 minutes might have had enough pull to drain the gear chamber and prevent the oil from back-filling. 

I think if the car has a circulation pump, this would be a non-issue as long as the pump is operating properly. Most all transaxles will scavenge oil from the diff housing and recirculate it back to the gear housings.

Lord of the Dunes said:
Is there something different about 100 mi on a dyno vs 100 mi at redline in a race? 

I don't think I've ever heard of other transaxles eating themselves on the dyno, but I don't repair transaxles. I just don't ever recall hearing anyone talk about trans failure on the dyno. Is this more common than we think, or is this a rare occasion? Have you seen this kind of thing happen to other trannies?

I'm kinda concerned. Albins has a rep as being the toughest trans available, yet this one didn't last 500 mi. Assuming it was properly assembled, it didn't have defective parts in it, how can someone else prevent this very expensive failure from happening to them.
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The difference being that when any car is used over terrain, there is virtually no way for the car to run 100 miles at a constant velocity (think of a 100 mile long straight/flat road at one speed). The vehicle will inevitably have to slow down at some point where the negative G's will allow the oil that was pulled into the diff housing to then backfill the gear housings as the car slows down. 

As mentioned already in my previous posts, we have had transaxles fail on the dyno, mostly with class 1 race buggy's. The common failure that we have seen with an Albins transaxle is having 4th gear seize up on the dyno. We think that this could be caused by running a hard pull in 3rd gear (as many tuners believe is correct as that is often a 1:1 gear in almost every other gearbox design). The thrust of 3rd gear against the shift hub could be squeezing 4th gear and causing it to lose its endplay between thrust surfaces, which then seizes the gear. Again, we have no actual hard proof, only a theory. We have since become very aware of checking 4th gear endplays in our setup housings to try to prevent this and eliminate any wrong-doing on our part. But, we have still had them seize with proper adjustments. We try to make sure the tuners know to run the car in 4th gear for dyno pulls.

I cannot say that we have any other issues on the dyno with other transaxles, but most cars that do get dyno tuned are fitted with Albins units.

 
They do get hot on the Dyno,  I have a breather box on my S4D, it has never over flowed and is pretty Hi above the Transaxle,  on a local dyno in vegas years ago, they where running it all day long trying to figure out a Mefi issues, and it was pouring out Trans fluid out the breather box, to this day that has never happened in the dunes,    

 
So back to my earlier question.  Why would you NOT want to run a pump?  The words "Ablins" and "Save Money" are never used together so that cant be it.

Also what does the temp have to do with why the pump should turn on or not?  I have no method of cooling in my trans.  Wouldn't the same logic apply to engine oil?  You dont want to pump oil just because its cold?  That cant be right.

Here is what I am thinking in just basic facts on the simple benefits of running a pump thats always on.

  • Ensure  all the gears have a constant oil shower in any situation.
  • Thermal dynamics would state that the more surface area you can distribute the oil to, the more heat transfer you can get.  If you're running one gear set hard and heating it up it will be distributed throughout the whole trans as a heatsink.
  • External pump screen
  • Sounds cool when you key on and you know its working.  Problem if you don't hear it.

Probably some other benefits but these were just the few I came up with.

 
r3meyer said:
So back to my earlier question.  Why would you NOT want to run a pump?  The words "Ablins" and "Save Money" are never used together so that cant be it.

Also what does the temp have to do with why the pump should turn on or not?  I have no method of cooling in my trans.  Wouldn't the same logic apply to engine oil?  You dont want to pump oil just because its cold?  That cant be right.
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We have had previous issues with pump motors burning up when keyed on before the oil has warmed up and thinned out. Cold oil it harder to pull through the vacuum and tends to put more load on the motor compared to running the pump motor after the oil has thinned out with temp. 

Mechanical pumps will always be best (hence the HV-2 having a mechanical pump). The Albins is offered with a diff mounted mechanical pump, but add's a few 000's to the total cost. 

I have said it many times, we don't think there is a necessity to run a cooler on most recreational sand cars, as they do not run long enough to require cooling of the oil. In all honesty, I would say most would need some sort of oil heater to bring the trans up to temp before use.

 
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