REM treatment for transmissions

[brian]

Every once in a while I hear about someone wanting to use the REM tumbling treatment to polish their transmission gears. Several of the tranny builders have agreed that it is illegal for vees because it is removing material and therefore forbidden. What does the committee think of this issue?

[hardingfv32-1]

What is there to think about, the rules are clear as written.

Now, if you were to mask all but the wear surfaces to prevent removal from the restricted areas, what would be wrong with that? Is it OK to use diamond dust in your oil to polish the matting surfaces?

Regardless of your opinion, how are you going to tell what was done?

Brian

[D Rader]

Any Type of pollishing Is removing metal, Deburing a new gear is removing metal, Radiusing edges on axle ends is removing metal. How far do you want it to go? Just something to think about. Dale.

[brian]

I really don't think polishing helps that much but don't want the racing monkeys to convince us we have to have it cause it's quite costly. Unlike some classes where REM is used, our trannies have a lot of miles on them and are well bedded in. Back cutting and lightening may bring benefits but are clearly illegal. So is oil relieving the gears. Anyone can tell when a tranny has been polished or run in with abrasives, the gears are very shiny and the machine marks are all gone.

[hardingfv32-1]

"Anyone can tell when a tranny has been polished or run in with abrasives, the gears are very shiny and the machine marks are all gone."

And the machine marks are not gone after 2-3 hundred thousand miles? You cannot control polishing using abrasives in the transmission fluid. Once the polishing is done you will switch bearings and replace the fluid so it is not like you are going to see anything in the oil.

Brian

[D Rader]

Helical cut gears, generaly do not benefit very much from polishing, like straight cut gears will. The Gears want to "walk" on the shaft, away from each other, without some sort of "bite". This will cause excessive drag on the thrust bearing/washers on the end of the shafts. This shows up almost immediately in spot tempratures on the dyno, with almost no reduction in drag. My experience with REM coating is no real reduction in drag, but substantialy lower tempratures. I don't really understand how you can have lower tempratures, with no reduction in drag, but I've seen it happen. I've seen a REM coated box (a big hewland, not a vee trans.) run an entire session completely dry with gears coming out looking almost new (no hot spots, or visible damage) I would'nt re-use them, but it was very surprising, and impressive. In my opinion both pollishing, and REM coating are not worth the expense in our transmissions. Dale.