Hewland gearbox for road legal weekend car?

[Pepa]

Hi all. Since I´ve got some free funds to spent on my ph1 172, I´ve got an offer to buy Hewland gearbox from ph1 172 racecar. It´s new rebuild, together with lightened flywheel and new helix clutch, costs 2500£. I can imagine what it´s like to live with lightened flywheel and helix clutch, but I´m not quite sure what will the Hewland gearbox do to my car. I live in countryside, so I´m driving mostly open roads, villages, etc. No highways, no big city traffic jams. So my question is, will I enjoy having this gearbox? Thans for helping me understand this modification.

 

[Steven103]

Whether or not you’ll enjoy it depends on what it is and what else you drive IMO. Sequentials are massively satisfying but only at full throttle. Personally I find dogleg boxes far more trouble than they’re worth, overall slower as you’re constantly manouvering around the gate in an unnatural way and worried about putting it in 3rd instead of 5th etc, but some dogleg boxes might be far more intuitive than others.

What type of box is it? Not heard of any sequentials for the F4R bar Sadev so assume it’s a dogleg box, a Renault casing with straight cut teeth or just a standard box with closer Renault ratios? Come to think of it I think the Grp N clio was new internals inside the standard casing? If it has an LSD then that accounts for a fair bit of the total value.

Any of the above will change the driving experience, but I’d only be considering it if you’ve already got everything else e.g. nice seats, high end dampers etc

 

[Crazylegs]

I'm no gearbox specialist but they're not designed for the road I don't think, it might not last as long as a normal gearbox but I could be wrong.

 

[Pepa]

Thanks for your reactions. This gearbox is not for road use really, now I know more info about it. When the owner was saying "race car", I was thinking track car, maybe rallye car, but the gearbox was in hillclimb special. Suitable just for another hillclimb car I think. So I have Sabelt GT - Pad seat and 4 point harness on the way instead