The Australian

Neat Gearboxes in Adelaide South Australia are the company that assembled my PAR Engineering gearset (I hope to never deal with PAR again ever - personal experience and opinion do your own research).

Neat Gearboxes were outstanding to deal with, and they have since built my 3.6 diff with solid pinion and billet bearing caps - also a flawless experience.

One of their existing products is the ‘circlip mod’ for the Az6, and they regularly release upgrade parts for common transmissions used in motorsport.

They are currently gathering interest in an upgraded helical 1st-5th set for the Az6 including the Miata version. Find them on Facebook and ask to be added to the group if you’re interested in this.

The Australian

sixshooter

iTrader: (12)

I wonder if it will solve the problems of the Miata az6.

Gee Emm

Hmm, prolly time I looked at the bookface again ...

ETA: Nearly 200 registered interest so far, FWTW.

SimBa

Posted to express interest. Will be really curious to see what their pricing looks like. If this gets a 6 speed to hold 600+ NM (~450 Ft/Lbs) reliably like they're targeting, it seems really appealing compared to a ZF swap.

ManiacLachy

I've joined their group too. If it works out it should negate the need to swap gearboxes and roll the dice with driveline vibrations.

It doesn't look like it'll be cheap, in one of the discussions I think they were talking AUD$7,000 or so for the kit.

Gee Emm

$7k is a bit steep for me, but if they can get deposits for a batch of 20 or 30 'kits', it might bring the price down. I wouldn't commit to a a production run just on 'interested numbers', get the punters to put up $1k, then you have a better idea how many are buying, and how many are rubbernecking.

If they are just going to sell a kit, then someone is going to have to put it together, add another $6-700 min I'm guessing. But as Lachy says, if it saves a transmission swap, there might be some savings to be had.

I'm glad I still have my spare transmission.

Anyway, early days.

SimBa

If it is that expensive I think it'll be a tougher sell. Similar to the Walter Motorsports offerings, if you dump that much money into a single transmission and manage to break it somehow then you're out the same amount of money to replace it. That's an expensive mistake.

If you could swap in a ZF and managed to break that, then you're out what, $1500?

Keeping the OEM setup is very appealing, but I'm not sure I could justify $7k if it somehow broke.

rascal

note that is AUD$7000 so approx USD$4700 at current exchange rates.

still not cheap but compared to the work to swap to a ZF, might be more palatable for some…

Z_WAAAAAZ

Add ~$700 (just going off of Gee's guess above) to have a professional do the teardown and install of the gearset and you'd still be in it for less than what my ZF swap ran.

Gee Emm

Philosophically speaking, I'd be prepared to pay a little extra to avoid the sort of issues that can arise with dissimilar swaps, Z's experience being something of a worst case scenario. Inconvenience, and expense.

However, there remains the possibility that a new gearset might have its own issues - bugs in the design or QC issues. At my stage of life, and my budget, I am much more risk-averse these days than five or 10 years ago, and pioneering stuff is not in my playbook.

The thought of turning up the wick in my car is tempting though ...

Lokiel

@The Australian Did you notice an improvement in the "feel" of the gearbox too?

Mine was always horrible and made "less horrible" by the Miata Roadster Tall-Angled Short Shift Kit, which allowed me to reliably select reverse (previously about 40% of the time it would only partially engage) and eliminated selecting the wrong gear the wrong gear (eg. on a turn, "finding" 2nd when I wanted 4th).

These issues seem to be "hit&miss" with AZ6 transmissions, even up to the Toyota AE86.
Some cars never have these issues but for those that do, using them is a horrible experience.

I have a friend who sold his brand new AE86 after 8 months because he constantly had difficulties going from 1st to 2nd and needed to go to 3rd instead to get across an intersection.
He described the car as a "death trap" due to many close-calls getting across the busy intersection and all Toyota did was try different transmission fluids (which "sort of" worked for 2 days).

My advice to buyers is test-drive the AZ6-equipped car when the engine is cold since SOME of the issues go away once the engine has warmed up,
If it doesn't feel right for ANY reason, walk away and test-drive another until your happy with the feel of the gearbox.

While minimising these issues, my AZ6 is still nowhere near as pleasant as the 5-speed in my 2005 SP23 or previous 1982 Mitsubishi JA Starion.

Z_WAAAAAZ

I'm with you on both of your points. Just wanted to confirm that the current theoretical cost of this AZ6 upgrade could very well be less than the cost of an off the shelf (KPower) ZF swap. Nothing to say of potential inconvenience... I won't even go there.

Hopefully a decent number of the current 200 interested individuals will stay interested when it comes down to brass tacks, and there's enough funds raised to get the project off the ground. Having a simpler solution available for the biggest hurdle against high-horsepower Miatas would be a game changer.

Z_WAAAAAZ

Don't want to derail this thread too hard but I'd be interested if the transmission builder has an answer to this issue as well. My original AZ6 had a "custom" short shifter that the PO must've fabricated in a dimly-lit barn. The thing was ugly, but worked well and I never missed a shift while driving the car in anger. AZ6 #2 was an NB1 model and I ran it for two track days with zero luck. 4th gear would basically disappear when downshifting from 5th, I think I'd be able to find it one out of every five or six times. I money shifted at least four times in two weekends with that setup haha. Ended up lightly modifying an eBay 5 speed short shifter to work and it completely got rid of any shifting issues I was having. Funny thing is that other folks have reported installing MR or other short shifters in their AZ6's and still having issues like that persist. So is there just a wide variance in the tightness of these shift linkages that can be addressed? I guess it's probably hard to say now that basically all of these gearboxes are over 100k miles...

The Australian

It’s too soon for me to call any changes in feel. I’ve driven it twice for a few minutes only with a standard shifter, and now my engine is out and stripped down…

Gee Emm

On price, the $7.5k (iirc) estimate is for 50 sales - pre-orders?

There is (was when I looked) about 130-40 signed up for the group, that's a strike rate of 1:3 as I expect that number to climb. It looks optimistic to me, but there is no doubt there is a pent up demand for something like this. When I hear what WRX and Evo people pay for gearboxes, that is dirt cheap.