Stovebolt.com Forums The Shop Area Driveline Dream Rear End Ratio and 3D Printing

While 3D printing gears that can handle power or torque are still a dream..........powder metal gears are common place in transmissions and driveline parts.

https://www.gknpm.com/globalassets/downloads/sinter-metals/english/drivetrain-products-english2.pdf/

https://atlaspressedmetals.com/stru...Z2rvm6gIVjsDACh3MCA2kEAAYAiAAEgKGS_D_BwE

My '49 3600 is for light work, with no towing. So it's mostly about getting comfortable highway speeds. Prior to me it had the 216 swapped out for a 1955 235, which I prefer to keep. I like the straight sixes a lot. I'd like to re-gear the rear, not change it to something altogether modern. The BW Overdrive is intriguing depending on how it's mounted.

Tires: I ordered up the 16x6 AM20766 Dexstar wheels. With 235/85 R16's the diameter works out to 31.7" which is 1" greater than the optional 17" wheel/tires you could originally order. The fenders look like they could take a bigger diameter still, but as wheel diameters go up, so do widths (and backspaces) which is the killer. 8R 19.5 tires are just 5.25" wide and yield a healthy 33.1" diameter.

I can provide you with all the information you need about BW overdrive transmissions and how to make the conversion.
Send me a PM.
Fred

If you're planning to do real truck stuff with your vehicle, a B/W overdrive trans is sending a boy to do a man's job. Get a 3/4-1 ton truck 5 speed with OD on 5th. gear.
Jerry

Doing a 14 bolt swap or other rearend swap would probably be a better optiin than trying to re-engineer a 70 year old axle design that hasn't been manufactured in 50 years. Just a thought.

There are a number of companies that will build custom axles for one's needs. The off road guys even have full float kits for 9" and 8.8 rears.

Thee are plenty of Dana type 60 axles out there, and all sorts of replacement gears in a wide variety of ratios are available for them. There's no point in reinventing the wheel, especially with a manufacturing process that's marginal at best.
Jerry

Anyone know if there is a CAD file floating around out there for the 3/4 ton rear end?

If you want to get serious about this, these are the people to contact https://ptggear.com/

I've though of this for a while, but the issue is that their are primarily two camps of people that want these rear axles and different ratios.
1, us, the guys that would like some more highway friendly gearing (3.30-3.70ish sets)
2, rock crawler and mud bog guys that want to find the elusive 5.83 sets and would probably want custom 6.17's or something

Getting a custom set made is possible, but I haven't gotten any quotes yet.

The biggest financial issue you will probably run into is that you will probably need a few thousand sets made to get the cost per unit low enough for people to consider buying a set. Then you have to wonder about how many people would actually buy a set.

If I was independently wealthy, I would totally make some 3.50ish sets and sell them for cheap <$500 to whoever was interested and just take the financial hit because I love these old trucks and would like to see more of them used for everyday driving, but I'm not.

There are enough options with modern ratios, OD trans.' Brownies, etc., that one should be able to figure out what would work best, then the true answer would be road habits with and without loads.

Ed

There's most likely a good reason that replacement gears, and/or non-standard ratios aren't being manufactured these days. The old law of supply and demand, plus the likelihood that no manufacturer with any sense at all would tool up to produce parts for such a small, specialized group of customers comes into play. There's probably a bigger market for buggy whips, and whalebone-reinforced corsets than there is demand for those gears!
Jerry