Cornfed-87XJ said:
I am just starting my build up, and I am wondering if the Puegoet is really worth swapping out for an AX-15. Mine has given my family 215,000 miles of service without complaint. I am planning on using the T&T Y-link, and swapping T-cases for a STAK (5.44:1), and it matters with both which tranny I use. Has the Puegoet unfairly gotten a bad wrap, or have I just been extremely lucky with mine? I am planning an extensive build up, and I want to make sure I do it right the first time. Thanks for your help.
Either you have been lucky, or I've been unlucky - I went through FOUR in three years of street driving. Finally got an AX-15 out of a 1990, and it was an easy swap (although I still want to swap to the later front end, so I can get rid of the internal slave that's driving me batty.)
If you're planning an "extensive build-up," or plan to really use that 5.44:1 low range, the Peugeot is likely to grenade on you, given time. No point in waiting for it.
The big problem (apart from the fact that it's under-spec'd for a truck) is that it has aluminum synchronisers. Also, I tore one apart (I had it handy) for my Materials and Processes class, and the heat treat on the gears is done wrong - they actually make the gears
too hard - which makes them brittle. I seem to recall that they were about HRc60-65, when the "sweet spot" for powertrain gears is something like HRc40-45. Make steel harder, you make it more brittle. Oops. Probably something that could have been handled with post-hardening normalisation, but they didn't do it.
I didn't get a chance to section a gear and take a "hardness profile" of it, but I'm inclined to think it's a surface hardening, so at least the core would have been good (but the gearbox I tore apart did have teeth missing on second and third - and it was in good shape when I put it in...)
5-90