New Quaife Single Seater Transaxle Gearbox Under Development

Quaife have bought the rights and designs for the pioneering Ralt transaxle gearbox, used in the 2002 Ralt Formula 3 car, and have begun work to develop and re-engineer the gearbox to be suitability for competing in single seater formulae up to and including Formula 3. This will include Formula Ford and Formula BMW.

With a steady development plan, Quaife believe this gearbox can successfully launch the company into its target market. Work is already underway to incorporate Quaife's own ATB differential design into the gearbox.

When the gearbox was originally designed, it was an innovative five-speed design that took the whole F3 gearbox design philosophy to a different level.

The design aims of the gearbox centred on moving total weight forwards and lower the polar moment of inertia. However as well as providing improved weight distribution, the casing also offered a significant improvement in rigidity, due to its dimensions. Overall, the magnesium casing of the gearbox is approximately cubic, making for an inherently rigid structure.

Visually, the most obvious trait of the gearbox is the much-reduced length. The casing itself is 200mm shorter than the rival units, and this length reduction offers a bonus of reduced interference in the car's underbody aerodynamics, as well as significantly reduced weight directly over the axle line.

The gearbox also utilises gears that are considerably narrower than standard rival ratios. In order to provide sufficient strength, the gears are actually larger in diameter. Therefore they run at greater centre-to-centre distances.

Drive is transferred through the ratios and diff to a pair of slim, sideplate-mounted, 2:1 step-up gears direct to the output shafts. The upside of this system is that torque fed back from the rear tyres is halved, taking further load off the gears, and especially first gear (notoriously vulnerable). A further advantage of the layout has been to fix the output shaft centre height, such that the driveshafts run parallel to the ground.

Changing ratios on the gearbox requires the removal of only one aluminium end casing, and there is no need to disconnect the gearshift mechanism. All the selector forks are identical, as are the dog clutch rings. The latter are all located on the primary (clutch) shaft, keeping their weight low down in the casing. t chassis.

With a modest increase in gear width, Quaife believe the gearbox capable of dealing with power outputs up to 260bhp, compared with the 210bhp of F3 engines.