I was thinking the EXACT same thing earlier...

 

John, Jimmy....I really think it depends on how you are going to drive. I don't really drive mine as hard as you would think...I could bang on them a lot harder. The Camaro I used race, I would truely dropped the hammer, let her go, what happens, happens. I try to prepare the car more now, and use a little good judgement. Paying attention to the track prep, watching my r's on the burnouts etc, etc... Never did that in the old days... Driving sticks for me, was drop the hammer and yank away, just as quick and hard as I could. I really liked to bang shift the sticks. I really don't think the linkage would take my punishment on the limited's... I am sure for autocross and spirited driving, they would be fine...

 

I know he does not drag but think if he has not had any issues that the 6 speed tranny must be pretty tough. He has to be putting so serious wear and tear on that baby.

I just wonder if he has had any issues and if so what were they.

 

I understand what you are saying. I am sure he shifts smoothly in his sport and takes good care of it. The punishment in the two sports I think is just different. One being spread over time, wear and tear, the other instantly punished on each run. Linkage, clutch, drive line all hit hard right up front. I am sure if he is reading thru the threads he will give us an update.

 

Yes very good points Doc, I really want to see what comes of this. I now first hand the Kleeman cars can be pushed, and Bobs V8, just about another 100hp over the stock v6, (and a few years worth of miles) and no issues But, numbers are numbers, I just wonder how much M.B. cushions their ratings.

 

As an old drag racer, I found the limits of a few parts and upgraded then. I didn't change the transmission when I put the V8 in becuase I was warned by Bob Beckmann at the time to keep things as simple as possible since we were breaking new ground and just wanted to see if we could make a CL500 ECU work in a Crossfire. To Web's comments, I do not baby the car. Yes I often nail it at 50 - 70 mph. It hits redline at some point almost everytime it leaves the garage. It is my daily and only driver unless I borrow the wifes car. I am not running stock tires. I am running 9.5" inch wide wheels in the back with 265's and soon going up to 275's. It is a little harder to get to 295's on a lowered car. Anyone who have ever seen my car in person knows I don't baby it. That said, the trans is at 93,000 miles, and shifts like new. Acutally better than new since installing the blue tops two weeks ago. Today I installed n/a 55 cams and probably just bumped the torque up some more. It seems much stronger in the mid range and upper range now. I probably gave up a bit in the low end. It seems to spin less from a dead stop but now breaks them lose at 4500rpm scrams to 6200.

The only one to blow an auto trans that I know of was Chuck Norris. I have no idea what heppened to his trans. HDDP put an SRT engine to his 6spd manual trans and had no issue and all he did with that car was race. No street miles.

As Jim pointed out. Kleemann has been supercharging the V6 for years in both manual and atomatic and no trans upgrade was required.

Would I like a stonger trans? sure! But like some people who won't give up a stick, I dont want to give up my grearing. All the higher rated gear boxes run a 3.07 rear gear. To change the trans, you need to change the rear end as well and the TCU. This is why SRT owners would love to have our 3.27 rear end but as of now there is no way to make this swap work. When Rudy installed the 55K engine and trans in Taz's n/a roadster he had to install a 3.07 rear end to make it run.

here is some interesting info:

All 7-Speed W7A700 700 Nm

M113 - V8 OE Kompressor 5-Speed W5A900 900 Nm

M275 - V12 N/A 5-Speed W5A1000 1000 Nm

M275 - V12 Bi Turbo 5-Speed W5A1000 1000 Nm

M113 - V8 N/A 5-Speed W5A580 580 Nm

M112 - All 5-Speed W5A330 330 Nm

 

You might want to edit that post for the sake of future visitors. None of the ratings are in ft/lbs for these trannys, they are in nm. I.E. - the 330 converts to 243 ft/lbs and so on.

Please note - the Kleeman only adds 100 hp so no more than you have now with a different torque curve than a turbo so definitely something to consider. The turbo should spike at least 30hp more than a sc at (all things considered equal) the same boost and is a different animal as far as stress is concerned. The one saving grace is that I did come across a ratings chart that showed a constant rating and momentary rating IIRC. The momentary rating was higher but I don't remember it being within my window and most definitely not yours + a turbo.

When you upgraded your tires did you go with drag radials or just wider street tires? How many times have you taken your car to the track and what were your 60ft times? Im curious how hard that thing launches?

Also, please note that the horror stories are not going to come from a crossfire site where no one but chuck has gone there before, but other boards where this tranny comes stock. On that note, that is actually kind of funny, the only one we know of on this site fried his tranny! It isn't like he was 1 out of 10 or even 20!!! Me no likey those odds!!!!

 

I think with the number you are after the SRT trans is a great investment. There isn't a quater mile track in my area, just a couple of 1/8 mile tracks which doesn't interest me. Most my launches are on concrete texas roads and a few black top ones. My tires are Yokohama Advan S4's. I thought the ratings I posted above were flb pounds and not Nm's since the V6 was shown at 330 flbls which is what I thought it was. When I got the V8 running Chuck Norris warned me a few times about needing to change the tranny. I had 330 ftlbs which is a little more than an SRT but my torque with very broad and flat. I have been very impressed with my trans. The first sign of these trans going bad is a delay in the 2-3 shift which I don't have. I will probably build a frankenstein trans by using my gear set in a V8 trans.

 

Ok, so I’ve gathered some good information for a short case study. Actually, I had done a lot of the homework early on and spent some time referring back to my notes to refresh my memory. Additionally, I spent a fair amount of time on new searches looking for updates/better information.

First, I wanted to address the introduction of the manual transmission into this discussion. The manual transmission is similar in some ways but much different in others. As a matter of fact, the manual transmission is so different for the purposes of this discussion it only serves to confuse the issue. i.e. among many, many other things, you can easily change clutches in a manual to prevent slippage up to a point before other things start to break. Unlike an automatic where the clutches are internal to the transmission and aren't something that you can simply "replace" over a Saturday afternoon in your garage unless you are a transmission tech.

The real truth here is that this seems to be relatively uncharted territory with the 330. The 580 on the other hand (in the SRT-6) seems to have a much larger group that has modded cars on the track and thus a larger pool of experience from which to garner information. From what I’ve “read”, guys have definitely seen a 30%-35% intermittent increase in power without a short to mid term failure. However, one guy at that rating went down one pulley size and the estimated increase of 50-60 RWTQ broke the proverbial camels back. Under what exact conditions, I don’t know, but similar examples are out there for all to read. To each his own as to how it is interpreted.

I think the real answer to the question of what level of power increase will our tranny survive and for how long is “it remains to be seen”. The 30%-35% momentary rule does seem like a fairly common story, but again, there are multiple factors to consider as I laid out previously that can change things either way.

That said, if we apply those numbers to Lantanas situation, it shows that he fits right in that same window. If he is currently making 330 ft/lbs and we plug that into the numbers, this is how it looks:

NA = NAG1 W5A330 - Constant Torque Rating - 330 NM = 243 ft/lbs

243*1.35 = Momentary Rating of 328 ft/lbs = right at the momentary limit of this transmission

Combined with his S4’s, one might say that he could last quite a while considering what I know about that tire. The S4 is a nice tire, but it is also an Ultra High Performance "All Season" radial and not what I mean by getting serious about putting power down. Not that Lantana isn’t “serious” but the S4 doesn't rise to the level of which I was speaking. In fact, the S4 isn't even an Ultra high performance "Summer" tire. Personally, I've run all sorts of tires on my Spyder in the pursuit of traction for straight line and cornering and this is a tire about which I can speak from personal experience.

Very quickly, I remember the S4s as having a nice strong sidewall for cornering BUT they also quickly turned to butter with my turbo. I lived in KY at the time and I would swear they had salted the roads or something in the middle of the summer with those tires! I sold those things off quickly and tried a few others including Kumho and BFGoodrich. The BF Goodrich KDW2s in particular were far superior for straight line but had a softer sidewall. However, the difference in straight line was so astounding. I gave up the sidewall in favor of acceleration and stuck with the KDW2s. They also weren't the stickiest tires I ever ran but they ranked among my favorite for an all around tire once I moved back to Houston due to their wet weather traction.

The point however, is that the grip between just these two tires alone was incredible and we are not even talking about a drag radial but a slightly different class of street tire. In fact, the UTQG rating of the S4 and the KDW2 is only 100 (300-400) but that alone equates to not only a difference in traction but also in stress to the driveline components.

As traction increases, so does the stress to the components of an automatic transmission. The easiest way to sum it up is that you can potentially live with a little more power and a little less traction or the inverse; a little less power and little more traction. The tricky part is finding the right mix for the long-term and we have yet to have someone fully explore this with the 330, especially at the track.

It will definitely be interesting to see how this all pans out. Personally, I would love to be able to sell the 580 I bought and turn a profit versus having to complete one more project on my car before driving it hard!!

I'll see if I can find it, but I could swear I saw a thread where someone was talking about rebuilding the 330 to a 580. I want to say that he was saying the case could be machined to accept the additional set of clutch plates or other.

 

I think I read that too. If I change transmissions, I will be looking for a 900 from a 55K. I have been told by Southern Hot Rod, that it is a lot easier to put my gearing into the the 55K case. I am not sure what my toque is now. I did a base line dyno that confirmed the 330 torque, but have since modifed my MAF housing and the elbow leading to the TB, added a CLK55 intake. With these two mods I notice nice difference. This weekend I installed 55 cams which made a big difference. It feels like a whole different car from about 3700 rpm up. I will get another dyno soon to confirm the gains. the cams I used were n/a 55 cams which have the highest lift of any factory 113 cam. The overlap is a little less than and right bewtween the overlap of the 500 stock cams and the 55K cams.

 

I know you wanted to avoid muddling all the info together in your post above, but can you expound a bit on the limits of the manual? I once heard it could support ~400 crank horsepower, as long as you're not dropping all of it on the line @ 4,000 RPM at the drag strip... Roll-in and skillful shifting also would alleviate the stresses.

I'm between Crossfires right now and am 50/50 as to which transmission to get... I'd prefer the manual but was only considering the auto because I thought it was stronger (since I'll eventually be getting the turbo). Since the revelations above, I'm beginning to question that. You also mentioned clutch upgrades... which company could we buy from to accomplish this? I thought it was OE, or nothing.

Thank you for the info!

 

Thanks for asking John, I had the same questions!

 

The turbo kit we are working on will get you right around SRT performance and i believe the manual or the auto will be fine. The boost levels that Web is going for are much much higher so his SRT trans is probebly a very good move. I base my belief that the stock manual or auto will work with the turbo kit on the fact that I have 20K hard driving miles on the n/a V6 auto trans with more torque than a SRT puts out. My trans also has 93,000 miles on it. HDDP has already proven that the manual trans will hold up in road racing when he swapped in a SRT engine into in six speed manual car. He did upgrade the clutch which is possible. I don't remember if he gave info on the clutch he used but his thread is still out there to read.

 

If a company needs a core to experiment on, I will have my old one which wasn't hurt in any way...

 

Spec Clutch and Flywheel Part Search


You can add a spec clutch. If I had a choice beforehand when adding a turbo I would go with a manual. They are simply 10x easier to deal with.

 

Dibs on the FIC/6!

 

Would love your suggestion as your transmission knowledge is far above my own.

What stage would you suggest if it where you and you wanted something that was good for street and track but also comfortable daily use. I was thinking stage 2?

 

Fair enough, but since it's not can you please edit. That is bad information and you don't want someone searching that and using it to make a bad decision?

 

Unfortunately their site doesn't show torque capacity for the crossfire part numbers. I'd call them with your ultimate plans and buy down not up. The higher the stage the more severe. It has been my experience that the stage I is an awesome improvement over stock even as a replacement for an otherwise stock vehicle. The stage 3 can get pretty damn grabby in first. A new driver that isn't accustomed will kill the car more times than not but it is drivable no less. Until I had the numbers in front of me, my inclination would be the same as yours with the 2. It was a comfortable clutch on my Spyder.

That said, a lot remains to be seen in that there is talk of a turbo that doesn't yet exist and real numbers haven't been published. Of course Corky can always tune to a spec knowing the limits of our trannys. If that is the case than there may be no need to upgrade at all. Also, if this is the case and you are due for a clutch anyway than a stage 1 may not only suffice but be a bonus.

If however his base kit has the ability to be modified and the boost turned up than you may want to plan accordingly. I can say this, I haven't known many people that ever sat on a base kit and not wondered what else it could do?

Sorry for all the ifs but that is exactly where we are at the moment.

 

No worries and great answer. It is so hard to plan ahead for something that does not even exist yet. I usually like to have all the parts at once so I can do all the work at once. On this I am just going to have to wait until Corky and the team and BEGi have the kit together and numbers posted before I start preparing my upgrade schedule.