M59 gearbox, has any counterpart from Renault?

[fmaciej]

Now everething is clear for me. Thank You guys for help

[Clan]

Originally Posted by B20F

The second gears have different ratio's and the M59 is a strenghtend gearbox like Clan already said, specially developed for the turbo's. If you're not chipping the turbo the M54 will do fine. For tuning you will need a M59.

Apparantly the reliable limit for even the Turbo's M59 gearbox is about 150 bhp ...( easily obtainable from the standard B18FT )

[Adi2727]

I know some Volvo's and Renault's(5) which are going fine with this gearbox at over 200hp.
The thing is, if you want a race/rally car you must fit on the 1.7turbo engine, a modified Trafic gearbox which is the fastest. Conical bearings from Volvo's gearbox must be placed in, otherwise normal bearings will collapse on heavy engine brake.

[fmaciej]

I don't want to race now, I've just brought that 440 B18FT and I want to fix everything what is failure. When 440 will be in good condition, maybe I tune engine.

[B20F]

In my opnion 90% of the failures are due to bad maintanance.
Most of these M gearboxes fail because of filling up with the wrong type of oil or oil loss which isn´t topped up regularly. Almost all of them have a small oil leak from the oilseal where the gearlinkage enters the gearbox. Another weakpoint is the 5th gear which sometimes come loose from it´s axle, it can be attended to with the gearbox in place.
The M59 can easily cope with a richmod which is around 170hp if you check the oil regularly and top it up with the right type of oil from Volvo or Miller´s crx. Oils containing sulpher additives will eat the brass components inside the box.

[Volvo Dave]

Another weakpoint is the 5th gear which sometimes come loose from it´s axle,

I had this problem with my 480 turbo. Once on the way home from work the gearbox got stuck in 5th and I ended up taking a slight detour untill I managed to free it. It eventualy packed up thankfully outside the house and I ended up shelling out over £700 for a replacement box.

Proberly a daft question but were the auto boxes fitted to the turbo engines uprated as well or just the manual box ? I have been toying with the idea of converting my 460 turbo from an auto to manual although it will involve the hastle of getting hold of a donor car for parts.