[DeTomaso] Colotti 4 speed

[L GRAY]

     I'm about to open up a Colotti gear box in the next month or so to inspect it for a client. The thing is actually much larger the the -0 ZF and the -2 we are familiar with. 
    In the John Wyer Racing program they actually were running 351 Windsor engines near the end of the program. 
   I'm working on the gearboxes for one of the Shelby built open top GT that currently has an Indy V-8 and a dash "0" box in it
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Leslie A. Gray

> On Mar 2, 2014, at 10:42 AM, MikeLDrew at aol.com wrote:
> 
>   In a message dated 3/2/14 8 03 21, gaino at earthlink.net writes:
> 
>     http://www.mecum.com/auctions/lot_detail.cfm?LOT_ID=HA0414-184930&ut
>     m_source=emv&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=HA0414-S147.1   I never
>     heard of a Colloti 4 speed?
> 
>>>> That was the Achilles heel of the original GT40.
>   The GT40 was built in a hurry, and at the time the only available
>   gearbox that would seem to do the job was an Italian four-speed.  It
>   quickly showed that it was not up to the task, and Ford arranged for ZF
>   in Germany to design and build an all-new purpose-built gearbox for the
>   GT40.  The thing is, there was a bureaucratic hangup, and the contract
>   was never finalized but Ford apparently didn't know it.  So seven
>   months went by, and Ford finally asked, "Where are our gearboxes" and
>   ZF's reply was "What gearboxes?  You never actually placed the order?"
>   Or something like that.
>   So the cars had to suffer even longer with the woeful Colotti unit.
>   Once the ZFs arrived, there was no looking back.
>   The small-block cars would often fail to finish races due to head
>   gasket failure; it took years for Ford to crack that nut.  In the
>   interim they shifted gears (figuratively speaking) and went for a
>   big-block 427 solution.  They believed the ZF was incapable of handling
>   the torque, and so they designed and built their own four-speed
>   transaxle (made by Kar Kraft), which utilized standard Ford toploader
>   four-speed gearbox internals.
>   Ironically, due to improper heat treatment of some gears, initially the
>   Kar Kraft gearboxes failed and put the cars out.  But once that minor
>   niggle was sorted, they became unbeatable.  Which is why the rules were
>   changed to simply outlaw large displacement, which effectively outlawed
>   the GT40.
>   Who would have guessed that Ford (well, actually Ford was pretty much
>   out of the GT40 business by then, and it was really John Wyer
>   Associates, JWA) then would have spiffed up the by-now-old and
>   always-overweight GT40, fit it with wider wheels and bigger brakes, and
>   a more thoroughly developed 302 engine, and go on to win for two more
>   years?
>   Mike
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