lighter gears

[silente]

Hi,

i was wondering if and how much it's possible to decrease power losses in gearbox lowering gears thikness or lightening them anyway.

Does anybody ever tried to do so and with which result?

What about rotational inertia and its effetc?

Thanks

[Notso Swift]

A more effecint gear design (like straight cut vs helical) has the most effect for effecient design.
Genearlly speaking boxes are engineered to a torque level. If make the design better this means you get to run more torque through it. THat said, I do know of sme boxes that have had thinner gears that are rated the same as the orginal (in this case a production box) by doing this they have been able to add an additional gear in the same space.

There is not a huge benefit with lowering rotational inertia, the smaller and faster moving the item the lower the benefit, wheels/tyres are heavy, flywheels move fast, but the bits in a box that move at engine speed (input shaft) are "relatively" small
THat is not to say there isn't a benefit, I am sure every F1 team has ten blokes focued on this exact subject, but it is an area of low relative return.

Cost of failure in a box is a DNF, most people don't want that risk,and manufactures do not want thier gears being known as fragile.

[THR]

thinner race oil in gearboxes

[GORDON STREETER]

Some of the Hot Rods use 2 speed boxes for the short circuits, also the slider rotors in a dog box are a lot heavier than a hub so they will take more enegy to get up to speed, admittedly a small amount but never the less "more" . Although seeing that all the gears/hubs/etc are rotating all the time in a conventional constant mesh box anyway, I don't think it makes a lot of difference to us normal racers.