LEGO Gearbox – Seven Speed Plus Reverse

We know LEGO is a very versatile medium to build with but this is beyond what we considered possible. Seven speeds and a reverse gear were built into the gearbox for this LEGO vehicle. It’s not completely an original design, but adds to the five-speed design found in a ten-year-old LEGO set. See it demonstrated in the video after the break. The design uses a sequential gearbox; shifting is accomplished by clicking the stick up or down depending on how you want to shift. If you’ve got enough parts on hand you can build this using the assembly photos that [Sheepo] posted.

Can’t get enough of the gears? Check out this model of a double clutch transmission.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHWDSnWk2jU]

[Thanks James]

44 thoughts on “LEGO Gearbox – Seven Speed Plus Reverse

  1. I was floored when I saw this on autoblog. I’ve brainstormed different tranny types in Lego for years, but never got to his level of construction.

    The first lego tranny in a Technic set was a 3-speed direct(no spring-back center shifter) linear shift slush box. No reverse.

  2. The only difference I see is fwd and reverse. A ‘normal’ manual transmission slides different ratio gears onto the main gear/shaft. I didn’t see anything like that happening.

  3. It’s things like these that bring me to this site hoping that one day I might learn something… Just incredible. And to think all I had was some Capsellas(sp) to keep me occupied..

  4. Geez, when did Lego get dogs and shift forks? When I built a trans, it was old-skool sliding gear stuff.

    I might have to paw through the new Technic catalog for some new stuff, I’ve got a model of a Ducati desmo bevel head that isn’t working right.

  5. This has to be one of the coolest things I seen made of legos.
    I didn’t know one could make a transmission out of them I wonder how he did the sliding gears and dog clutches on this.

  6. Oh wow, I have that kit! I remember trying to hook a Lego RCX to it when I was younger, but I can’t remember if I ever got it working; maybe I’ll take another look…

  7. I would also like to see this doing some useful work of some kind.

    I wonder how and where the wear would show?
    That is to say that observing it would be interesting.

    Maintaining it…perhaps too interesting. ;)

  8. Incidentally, the ‘sliding gear’ type gearboxes people refer to in comments are known (afaik) as “crash gearboxes” due to the way the gears come together.

    I always thought that was an apt name ^.^

  9. @Moggie100: Yes, although most “crash boxes” in real cars are actually still constant mesh; they just use dogs instead of synchros. I’m sure sliding-gear automotive transmissions exist, but I’m not aware of any examples — other than reverse gear, which uses a sliding idler gear in most manual transmission designs.

  10. this is a really cool car, but does it actually drive in any gear other than 1st and reverse? ive seen a few videos of it but ive never seen it drive faster than 1st gear and ive never seen it shift while moving, other than reverse…

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