What's up with AC? they have a tcase gears section on the menu but nothing appears. Is the site managed by amateurs? Or is Calmini not sharing the magic chicken that lays the golden eggs?

They were gonna have rockstomper make them sets of tcase gears, but rockstomper said they didn't want to invest in them, and Jane and Mike couldn't come up with the money needed to do the manafacturing. They have had that section on the board for a long time now, and it isn't gonna happen, so they need to take the section out.

Not to mention the "Complete Steering System" page.

Last time I spoke with Mike@AC, He said that they put it on hold because Auto Customizers was in the process of relocating to a larger facilities.
I thought that they were going to get the gears from Australia? I could be wrong.

Any insider info from anyone?

Yeah, the steering section has been there for a while. They said the complete system would be out in May. I couldn't wait any longer to see what they came up with, so I went with L&P.

long ago i realized AC was a site for people who like to wait...and while they can wait, buy clothing and camping equipment...

Don't be so hard on AC. Lots of companies promise parts over a long period of time before they come available. Their only mistake is talking about them before they're released.

AC is a growing business. That said, they've kept Nissan guys hopeful for Tcase gears and steering for some time. With steering in particular, you need to make damn sure what you put out is safe to avoid being cleaned out by lawyers.

Honestly, I've never had any problems with them.. My orders have pretty much always shipped out on time and arrived in good shape. The only time one didn't was because it was backordered for a few days.. 2 weeks later, I had it on my doorstep. No big deal, I was happy.

The stuff that I have ordered, and what Stacy has ordered for me (cool birthday presents), have always come ontime, and when I talked to Mike over the phone, he is always helpful.

If we are pegging AC for anything, then the only fault I can site them is with their email responses. I asked about stainless steel brake lines before I did my suspension lift on Memorial Day weekend, and I just got a response from that email yesterday.

So, they are ok in my book, and I will continue to do business with them.

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long ago i realized AC was a site for people who like to wait...and while they can wait, buy clothing and camping equipment...

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AC is awesome regardless of waiting time. Where else can you get hard to find nissan parts in one place Also Mike is very helpful.

I have no problems at all with AC. I ordered my rear locker from them and it arrived damaged with a big hole in the bottom of the box. The had UPS pick it back up (free of charge) the next day, and ordered a new one for me. I had the new one within 2 weeks due to a National backorder. Doh! I called ARB myself and they said that they had to get them shipped over from Au.
Mike and Jane always returned my emails with in a few hours, and returned my calls within a half hour or so. Communication was great throughout the locker incident.
I from them numerous times beofer, and they 've been great with shipping times, etc.

I've been hoping for an alternative to Calmini for T-case gears for a long time. I can justify $1300 for a set especialy when their other gear sets are $995 or so.

I was in contact with bigballsoffroad.com in Australia about gears for the high-pinion H233B front diff used in the GQ Patrol that I hope to use for my solid axle project when the time comes. Without any prompting, they mentioned in passing that they had produced TX10A "Rockhopper" gears and that AC would be the US distributor. This was a few months ago, but I recall getting the impression that it wouldn't be long before they were in mass production.

Brent

Oh nice.. did they mention the ratio of the rockhopper gears at all?

My AC works well but I rarely drive in the summer...

Originally posted by Liam Quigley:As a director of Rockhopper, I'd like to point out a couple of things in our defence.
Gearcutting is a wildly expensive and complicated business. Developing a gearset for nissans was never going to be cheap, if one of the other directors didn't have a Nissan we wouldn't be having this conversation ; a suzuki set involves two basic gears, the hobs alone leave no change out of $20k, A nissan set involves 5 gears plus shafts and spacers.
Many people claim that some toolmaker they met can cut gears cheaply.... Here's a challenge;take the simpliest automotive gear you can find to them to make an exact copy(most back out at this stage) Tell them you want to run it up to 8000rpm, that it occasionally runs dry, that you want it to run silently.They'll laugh in your face. Then tell them you want it to run fowards and backwards equally well and you want to shock load individual teeth with 300 horsepower. Then show them the dogteeth on the synchro's (very few people can/will attempt to cut these), if they havn't had a heart attack, tell them that when the ratios are changed the cut edge of the gearface is within 2mm of the dogteeth(the cutting edge of the hob has to clear this !).
Then tell them you want to pay how much ???
We are very proud of our product, and will not sacrifice quality to save a couple of bucks.
Liam Quigley
Rockhopper. (This was posted back in '01!)