There has been significant growth in the Trophy truck scene in the past few years, particularly in the USA. This has been reflected back here in Australia with some heavy hitters in the sport, debuting trucks on the Australian Off Road Racing Circuit.
Albins has always been at the forefront of driveline technology for off-road and it was inevitable that they would produce a product for the growing truck market at some point.
That time has come and it was mainly due to Albins success with V8 supercars.
When Albins won the tender to supply the entire 2013+ V8 supercar categories with sequential transmissions, they developed a super high-torque rated 6 speed sequential transaxle. This was lightweight and had various inspection ports to lower labour, spares inventory and overall costs involved in running the cars and the continuous rebuilds that are normally associated with gearbox maintenance.
The transmission also had drop gears, which are in-effect a final gearing set that is separate to the ring and pinion. These were designed to be altered (replaced) without removal of the transmission itself…further reducing costs and spares inventory.
These V8 supercar transmissions had a 5000km “life” that they were designed to meet, this meaning that the cars should do 5000 competitive kms without a pull-down.
In the 18 months of testing that the transmissions had done to date, they have excelled and we are looking forward to seeing Albins fill the grid at the Clipsal 500 in March.
How does this all relate to the Trophy truck trans? Well it is essentially the same box, just without the differential. The ST6-I (I for in-line) has the same V8 supercar gear-stack, internal oiling system and shift assembly etc. but is packaged up in an inline configuration, however variations are already in the USA that have a bizarre V drive configuration attached to them.
The ST6-I has had some limited competition time in Australia at this time, but recently made it first home, outright, at the Parker 425 in the USA as an integral part of Robby Gordon’s new SPEED Energy Trophy Truck Team.
This being the first major event in the USA that the product was in action after prototype testing, certainly demonstrated that it was going to be a big hit amongst top tier racers.
Robby Gordon stated that the car was far more responsive and significantly faster with the Albins Trans than with previously fitted Automatic Transmissions.
Albins are taking orders for and customisations of the ST6-I for Trophy Truck applications. Contact Albins Sales department on 03 9 5335 8022 or email sales@albins.com.au
