Has anyone had any experience, good or bad with Fortin gearboxes?? I have heard they dont handle high horsepower engines very well but are more suited to Super 1650. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks,
If the car already has the fortin gearbox (if you are buying a complete car) then go with it they are a good but very expensive gearbox. If you are looking for a gearbox l can do a Mendeola at a very good price.
The early Fortins run a DG300 gearset, the later a DGN, and the newer 4 speed the DGN wide gear. It's not an expensive gearset. The dogs are also standard Hewland, and are common, and cheap. The Fortin is considerably cheaper to support than either an Albins or Renault as there is tonnes of aftermarket support for the Fortin, Hewland based internals. The CWP will cost, however I don't know if it'll sting you much more than an Albins.
The Fortin 5 speed is rated at 300hp, the 4 speed wide is used in American cars with serious HP. They run torque converters to take impact load off the gearset and CWP.
I ran the older Fortin 5 speed with 520whp. It held together but we went through 4 dogs in 4 events (not destroyed, just rouned off and probably repairable) and the matched dogs on one fifth gear was also rounded. All in all the Fortin performed very well. Saying that I'm now running an Albins Sequential simply because I didn't want to rip the Fortin to bits.
The shift is a little weird. Very short throw between gears on the same gate. Also the 2-3 gate has no centering springs. So it can flop between the 1-R and 4-5 gates while in either 2nd or 3rd. Feels weird to begin with, but it's quck to get used to.
Cant say i ve had the same experience that some of the other competitors have had with fortins transaxle, it was hugely expensive to maintain in parts with Crown Wheel and Pinions having to be replaced every single race without fail and they were very expensive ,never had any problems with dog rings they were very good but gear sets were replaced on way too many occassions . Reverse gear is tiny should read FRAGILE and has to be treated very gently. I wouldnt even use it to back my car into my trailer The transmission has a poor shift and it was easy to select 2 gears , Ivan Albins was able to cure this in my box. with some major mods .Between 98/ 2002 i had 13 dnfs due to tranny failure The average parts cost per race was around $3000 We rebuilt these units ourselves so this didnt include labour costs I know from my experiece with wilson motorsports in the USA that they are now having good reliabilty and longeviety sucess with these trannys at around 500 hp BUT only with the use of a torque converter . Take it from me buy an Albins the fortin is just way to expensive to maintain unless you intend to run reasonably low horsepower and torque. obviously I am not a fan Just thought id air my experience
