Good morning Steve,
An interesting take on the free motion aspect of the coupling and maybe more relevant than mine. I have, as you know, experimented with the amount of free movement from inserts with zero movement to some with 20 degrees plus. My conclusion was that the high torque spike was able to dissipate somewhat before contact was made therefore reducing the impact. Although, as you say, maybe we are looking at a longer swing of the hammer before it lands causing greater impact. I don't think this will be resolved without the use of a sophisticated test bed trial which none of us can afford so "feel" is all we have to go on. I don't have a problem with people using the MMC rubbers (they are quieter than mine) but I will continue to experiment and improve if I can. One of my problems is that the cars leave here with a quiet drive train and a happy customer and I do not get to experience the shrunken roller problem because people fix it with the MMC rollers without coming back to me - which I quite understand - Lancaster is a long way from everywhere!
My first experience of a M3W was a hired car from the factory and when I had got it back to our holiday home I was so shocked at the drive banging if you tried to pull away with less than 2500 revs on the clock that I called the factory. I told them I thought something was broken and they should send a transporter to recover it. They said not to worry - they are all like that! My car had the same problems and that is where we came in, as the saying goes.
My first experiences with Centa couplings were fraught with spline failures (including my own car) which is why I developed the alloy steel hub and before too long I insisted that all of my upgrades used the alloy hub. I don't think any of us know how many original hubs have failed but I do know that Krazy Horse had a lot of wrecked ones under the bench! 4% of the 2500 cars produced only comes to 100 failures and I would not be surprised if the figure was higher than that. I can't imagine that MMC will ever publish the figures so we will have to keep on guessing.
Enjoy the rest of your Sunday.
Phil.
