Doug, have you talked to Axis about using the upgraded HD Ashcroft R380? After the email from Kevin at Axis today, I had an email exchange asking him about that, since they are backing off the R380. it's still not clear if he understood Ashcroft offers the HD. I like him choosing a bulletproof route, but I"m still unclear how durable Ashcroft's R380 will be.
I really want an overland ready, durable, reliable tranny that is EMP proof and ready for overlanding in developing countries with parts supports if needed. This is really the only unknown for me in my next build.
This was a marketing email. Kevin/Axis makes conversion kits, this is the direction he's chosen to take.
We build custom defenders, we are not in the conversion kit business.
Working with Axis and QuickDraw has been to develop parts for our builds.
I worked directly with Kevin for many mos, April- Nov to develop a solution to mate the r2.8 to the rover transmissions as you may know reading the other thread. As of Expo East I still didn't have a workable solution. I started this thread to document what I have decided to do based on the wisdom gained from that experince, and engineering now available to me.
Cummins was actually who introduced me to Chad Mckinney in November.
I have typed it out several times on this forum,but here goes again, after going back and forth with Dave Ashcroft, he indicates Twisted, Bell and others are running 400+ ft lbs through his HD version of the r380 without failures. No a stock or original r380 will not service the torque of the 2.8 for long, so what Kevin says there is correct. That's not what I'm doing.
A custom bell housing allows the use of a large off the shelf clutch, and mates right up to a land rover transmission specially built to handle to power. We now have 7 trucks waiting for these swaps so results/feedback will be readily available from clients in the coming months.
Chad has the first of these bell housings on its way to me with clutch etc. Should be here first of the week, right on schedule with our time line established back mid December.
I started this thread to indicate what we are doing, not as a round table on what others are doing, there is another thread running on this forum for that.