G Force transmissions T56 part failures experiences

Well last July I switched to GForce Transmission's 1200hp capable gearset. Since I have put their parts in my transmission I have had 3 failures in the transmission.

When I first ordered their parts, I did receive them in the time frame promised. I was happy about that. However there were no oiling grooves machined in 3rd gear I believe, it might have been 4th gear. also I had to run around to local machine shops to have it machined for the oil grooves AND more importantly the one face on 3rd gear had not been machined down to the proper height. Thank you very much. needless to say that was quite the frickin' pain in the rear, as I had someone drive over from the states just to do my rebuild on the transmission! I had to send him back home only to come back another day!

First episode was after 12 or so passes on the car last November, 3rd gears decided to break into 5 pieces. Root Cause for the failure was the weld broke and caused quite some problems. There was collateral damage as well. At least one other gear had to be replaced. I have details of that in another letter I can dig up.

What I thought could be considered a good corrective action was to cryo and mikronite all of the new components, I went to Liberty transmissions for this service. That was almost $500, I figured it would be a good investment considering the power level I am at, I DON'T take shortcuts.

So GFORCE replaced the the damaged components and provided new parts for the parts damaged due to collateral damage. Unfortunately when 3rd gear let go at the track, as it did on the bottle, motor spun to 7500 with the bottle on and no load on the motor as 3rd gear sat in the bottom of my case. how do you think the piston ring lands liked that bit of exercise.

So trans goes back together, it is spring 07, I participate in Hot Rod PGD, Pinks All Out, and then Milan Dragway Friday night races = 10 total passes (6 on motor, 4 on the bottle) well, would you believe my trans would not shift anymore! WTF!!!! I could only get it into 1st gear. pull trans, tear it down, the weld on 3rd gear was coming apart...again! so G FORCE hogged it out and put a larger weld in it for this repair. at this point car is down yet again, and G FORCE is back ordered on parts. I had to pay for 2 new gears as they had cracked teeth after a whole 10 passes! hmm quality material/processing controls I say! they flipped me some new fluid for the trans, and did provide me a discount on the parts I had to buy. another $500 invested plus shipping, lol! G FORCE did provide parts to me in three weeks.

At this point I do some homework and decided to face plate the transmission as well. not a cheap venture but it seemed to be the next best upgrade, I just wanted to drive the car. I bought the components from Liberty and had Six Speed Inc. do the faceplating. so another $1k later trans is ready to go back together, not including the other $500 and other incidentals. I also had twisted splines on the input shaft from G FORCE so I had a custom input shaft made. put the trans back together and I am ready to go again.....

Next repair involved 1.5 passes at the track. on my 2nd of 2 motor passes the input shaft broke, NOT A GFORCE part. but the interesting part is the most of the teeth on 1st gear and a few teeth on 3rd gear were cracked! i finally wise up and realize that no matter what i do I just can't AFFORD TO KEEP RUNNING G FORCE COMPONENTS THAT FAIL IN MY TRANSMISSION!!!

I send the ALL of their parts back to them, to see try to work something out.
in the mean time I had worked with Craig at Liberty to identify a more permanent solution. I think that we have found that happy medium. I am f'n ecstatic to state that after about 10 motor passes and 6 n2o passes the trans is performing FLAWLESSLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I didn't get that many consecutive passes out of my trans with g Force parts in it.

when I spoke with G Force after they received the parts they offered me 2500 for my trans as a down payment towards a G force clutchless transmission, lol! that was the only thing they could do for me. so after spending another small fortune to make things RIGHT, it was only worth 2500 to them, hey whatever.i was not about to send them a perfectly good transmission for a product that i have ZERO faith in.

also third gear had to be pounded onto the mainshaft during assembly, hmmm part was not honed properly. no????

if their parts were perfectly fine then why would they not take payment from me to return their defective/some good product back to me????????????????????? they paid for those costs, maybe they felt bad after all I went through, even though it had nothing to do with their product. but what do i know.

so much for the advertisement of 1200 HP capable transmissions for your F Body, lmao!!!! i guess it is like everything else. buyer beware, take my approximately 500,000 cents worth and decide for yourself. but that is what I have gone through in the last 15 or so months.

their customer service i won't say was horrible until it boiled down to me telling them I couldn't afford to keep running their parts, and i looked for a resolution.

I couldn't sell these parts to anyone on line and sleep well at night so i am stuck with $2300 in useless parts.

yeah yeah i know the car is raced, what i can state is that I NEVER EVER experienced cracked teeth on my OE gearset that I ran in the transmission before, no welds ever failed. and the only reason i went with G FORCE is after I snapped the input shaft off the car early last year, i know what the root cause of that was. i did not know that a combo shaft out of better material could be made, or i would have just done that. i am forever learning about all of this Hot Rod stuff!

while i am on my soapbox, i ordered there billet keys back in '04 that actually was a big problem for me last year when i had the trans lock back in 4th gear again, when we pulled the trans the billet keys that I had bought, well they weren't really billet pieces. I installed true billet keys in the transmission immediately after seeing that they weren't a true billet component. thanks Six Speed Inc, courtesy of D&D.

i tried to stick to facts of what the failures were. you will of course make your own mind up.

Wow, that is a lot of problems:eek:

What kind of clutch are you using??

3 years ago when I was looking for a trans to use with may deal, G-Force told me there T-56 was only good for 800# torque. That was with a bunch of ifs, like if your car was under 2800#, if you don't use a hard hitting cluch, if your tires did not hook:confused:.
So I went will the GF5R, and a Street twin clutch. That combo cost me 2 sets of rear 9" gears, 2 leaf springs (bent) and bent a CE Slide-a-link traction bar, but no trans problem at all.

I'm now using a custom 7", adjustable, soft hitting, sintered iron, 2 disc, clutch from http://www.advancedclutches.com/
My problems seem to be solved, I hope yours are too, BTW very nice car:bow:

I opened my G-force trans up when I was changing the clutch, it looked great inside;) 60 passes, 1500 miles.

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a224/sc68z28/4707006.jpg

---Bill.

Well Taner , I was going to respond to your post on LS1tech but those punk asses banned me for asking questions to their sponsor .

I've read your complaints about the gears from G Force . I think its a combo of a few things .

(1) I think the metal they are using for the gears is too hard . I've learned over the years that you have to find the sweet spot on hardness with gears . If they are too soft , they flex which is good but they wear too quickly . If they are too hard , they do not flex which is bad but they hardly wear at all . Think of it like a tree . Trees that can't flex a little break when the wind gets too strong .

(2) The design of the gears along with the box posted above rely on a straighter cut gear which is stronger because it changes the dynamics of how the gears push against each other . The more of a helical cut in the gear , the quieter it is in operation but the weaker it is . The straighter the cut , the stronger it is but is much louder .

(3) I think they might have over rated their gears for your application . There are so many variables to consider when coming up with a certain number . Weight is a huge factor !!! Other big ones are tire size , clutch setup , how quickly the engine makes torque and driver . I've seen stock T5 Mustang transmissions hold up in high 10 second cars while others manage to blow them up running 14's with half the power .

As far as welds breaking and billet keys failing , those are things that have to be worked out by designers and engineers . I can understand you being upset but some of the blame might fall on the builder for over looking issues that could have been avoided before the unit was built and installed .

thanks Bill, a GF5R is a far cry from a T56 designed trans. that is a properly designed trans to take alot of power.

source,

they sell you the world, but provide you with ****. I have gone rounds with them on everything. how is it my stock T56 parts NEVER experienced failures of this kind??????

G force is not sponsor of LS1 tech, as far as i know.

9310 is the material that the gears are made of right now, same stuff used in liberty's lcs5000 trans, and you can even get VAR9310, now that is the bomb! question is a couple of things, heat treating, and also machining?

billet keys, my point there is that they weren't a true billet piece, i am sorry but i should get what i am paying for, lesson learned though i understand what you are saying.

welds, as far as checking the weld, that is NOT the responsibility of the assembler to identify a poor weld, often this is not visible to the human eye. I have cut and etched and measured penetration on more than a few pieces of metal in a previous life.

i have taken steps to help the shock when launching the car, ie. limit twisting the input shaft splines. that is another reason i went to the nx maximizer 2, watching the car make passes is way different than it used to be. car is not as violent.

thanks for the response!

enjoy the vid.....

http://videos.camaroz28.com/video/09e6678d-3475-4888-8218-99c20009f44f.htm

Well Taner , first off I have nothing to gain or lose from you bashing G Force . I was referring to me getting banned on LS!tech for asking 6spds some questions that they obviously didn't want me to ask so the mods banned me for it .

As for your experiences , as much as they suck , its racing and thats the ultimate loop hole for companies to use when something breaks . Getting your money back is just not going to happen .

Do you have pictures of the damaged gears where the welds broke and pictures of the keys that broke ? I would like to see them and give you my unbiased opinion on them .

I just seen the pic of the 3rd gear , that looks like it split not actually an over powering issue . Look at the breaks , they are clean where the gear splits and the teeth got damaged from the aftermath . I had some 2nd gears do that on some T5's I built and it had to do with the tolerances not being right between the out side gear (what you have in the picture) and the inner part that rides on the mainshaft . That is an issue with the gear itself and not the material used . Tremec uses a totally different design when building their gears and why G Force does not use the same procedure is beyond me .

thanks again for the education.

Not sure if you are being a smart azz or serious but either way , no problem . As for G force products , I have had several issues with the T5 stuff along the way and that prompted another company to start suppling a similiar gear with a better design . G force has always been a pain for me to deal with .

actually it was a bit of both, i have already been around the block here with my transmission. so some of what you state i totally agree with. but you don't know my total experience, so you are speaking to a scenario that doesn't necessarily apply to me. the weld failed on 3rd gear causing the damage, the weld was failing again on the second go around. if you don't believe me feel free to call Paul at Liberty's Gears.

i am through with this, respond as you see fit.

Well you guys seem to have it figured out . Good luck with your trans ......

http://videos.camaroz28.com/video/4badb761-12e7-423b-a31f-99c7016f0c46.htm

it keeps shifting and shifting.... lmmfao!!!! sorta like a Duracell battery

If I ever go back to using my Camaro at the strip (i.e. sticky tires on a prepped surface) I will just get a Lenco and be done with it.

Rich

(1) I think the metal they are using for the gears is too hard . I've learned over the years that you have to find the sweet spot on hardness with gears

Is it possible that the cryo-treating and mikroniting that Taner did was responsible for making the metal too hard?

I don't know much about this stuff, but I need to learn some of it, because it's time to rebuild my T56. :D

The Mikroniting is just a polishing process and I'm not sure if it even does any good at all . I talked with the people at Mikronite and they even told me they are not sure if it makes a difference or not .

As for the cryo process , its possible that it contributed to the brittleness of the gears but more than likely it was the material they used along with other factors like poor design and workman ship .

i cryo'ed my original T56 components about 4 years ago, everything worked great, i eventually snapped the input shaft, a voilent deadhook caused that, it broke alot of ****, but not the gears in any way shape or form. that broke the input, billet yoke on my driveshaft, the driveshaft and the ring and pinion. imo, cryo works. i had success with it.

if you plan on doing the rebuild yourself, i am sure you can talk to Craig at Liberty's or Amber at T56 rebuilds for parts. i am now making over 900 fwhp. you need to assess your power level goals is all, that should provide you a direction to move in.

if you plan on doing the rebuild yourself, i am sure you can talk to Craig at Liberty's or Amber at T56 rebuilds for parts. i am now making over 900 fwhp. you need to assess your power level goals is all, that should provide you a direction to move in.

As my car will be primarily a street car with daily-driver duties, I won't be getting anywhere near your power levels. I enjoy the occasional drag race, but I would prefer not to install a roll bar, so 11.50 or slower in the quarter. I will also not be installing a drag-only suspension and won't be using slicks. ET Street Radials are probably the stickiest tire I'd ever use.

Based on all of that, I've set my power level goals at about 450rwhp.

A basic upgraded T56 will fit your build with no trouble at all .

A basic upgraded T56 will fit your build with no trouble at all .

And what upgrades would that entail?

I, like Taner, am not the kind of person that likes to cut corners. I'm going to build the rest of the car to withstand more power than I'm actually going to give it. I don't want to be running at 99% of what the parts are capable of handling. That's not enough of a safety factor for me. I don't like breaking parts!

So, when I say I'm going to have ~450rwhp, that means I want my drivetrain to be able to handle at least 550rwhp. :D

I will just get a Lenco and be done with it.
Rich

Tanner, your car looks great in the vidio :bow: man that thing moves!! It sounds like you leave at a relatively low RPM?

Rich, I respect your opinion a lot, and would like to hear more on this.
Not to hijack this thread, lets hypothetically say you have 1000 hp (like Tanner) in a 3200+# car.
How many Lencos would you stack (# of gears)?
Why the Lenco and not just a clutchless Liberty or...?
What kind, or whos clutch would you use?

---Bill.

i leave at 5k, thanks!

mcleod soft lok, slipper clutch, useless on the street though.