Thread: A box of cogs question

Well I hope you are all geared up to answer my question. Any way I am at the moment rebuilding a LT230.I have one mostly good box and one with a broken diff. The input gear/ intermediate gears and final gear from the box with the broken diff are in better condition than the other box. The better intermediate gear tooth count is 44, 4 more than the the older intermediate gear. I can of course change the gears no problem, but will more teeth mean a higher or lower ratio?
Cheers Hall

If the high range gear on the cluster has 44 teeth - and the gear it drives on the same shaft as the diff has 28 teeth, what you have is 1.003:1 high range. I bought an LT230 cheap that had supposedly come out of a disco with 1.222:1 high. For my purposes this should be overall better in a Defender than the standard 1.41:1. However, turned out it was 1.003:1, which would probably be unsatisfactory with high first and reverse not slow enough.


The serial number and stuff attached to this LT230 indicate it was originally in an early Range Rover with a Torque Flite auto.


A long standing unfinished project which I hope to complete soon is to reassemble this box with a new input gear I had designed, cut and hardened. The standard input gear has 26 teeth and drives the middle gear on the cluster which has 41. Instead, this new input gear has 22 teeth and drives the 44 tooth high range gear on the cluster. Somewhat similar to layout in Series transfer boxes except that high gear is at the back instead of front.. The overall ratios of this box will then be High 1.27:1 and Low 4.21:1 with the standard helical 19 to 40 tooth gears in low. This is 27% reduction from standard 1.003 box in both high and low ranges. Should overall be better than Maxidrive 30% slower low range gears, which are straight cut and noisy.


I gather the easiest way to get transfer boxes to match up with the gearbox when reinstalling is to remove the input gear, then replace it when everything else is bolted up. However, a standard 1.003 box must be installed with this gear in place because the rear high range gear is larger than the middle gear on the cluster that the standard input gear drives. The input gear cannot be replaced from the rear. However, my special 22 tooth gear which drives the high range one can.