A Fruitful Development Partnership

I've just a very fruitful visit to my local engineering company Nova Race Gearboxes. I found them while looking for a billet sump system for the CRB1000RR The owner is such a racing enthusiast so we spent a long time chatting about his Jedi racing and my RGB racing.

We also spent a good deal of time chatting about a CBR1000 swinging sump system he is developing, and his ATB equipped diff with engine driven reverse. He simply very keen to see his creations run in competition and by a midfield runner at that. He's not interested in guys chasing championshiops as they want to win at all costs and won't tolerate unreliability. What he needs is a development partner to feed back real world data and help him on the development curve for the items.

The upshot of all this is that he'll happilly let me run both the diff and sump on long term loan for free. His plans for the diff were eventually to give it mounting ears so that it can become a stressed member in the chassis, but it didn't take off after the Kit Car crisis fiasco. So it's just sat on the shelf.

Time to rekindle those plans me thinks.

The diff actually weighs around the same as my existing setup, but has three crucial advantages

1. Change of final drive ratio... I bet you could do this in less than 10 minutes, there is no necessity for split sprockets or other nasties. 6 allen head bolts allows the sprocket to be removed. And it has an integral cush drive too.

2. Engine driven reverse which doesn't need re adjusting after the sprocket is changed, and may actually move the car backwards... unlike my current system

3. Ease of fitting to the engine so that the sprockets are in the same planes. careful design of the CRB engine mounting system would take an engine swap down from a full days work to an
afternoon.

It would move a little bit of weight to the rear of the car, as the sprocket is not concentric with the drive shafts, but behind it to increase the chain length and its life. but as it is no weight penalty it seems an absolute bargain.

Whoo Hoo!