AF Rayspeed have issued a statement about their Lambretta 5-speed Clo5e gearboxes after failures during the BSSO Mallory Park practice day yesterday. The company issued the following statement…
Dear Customer
I am sorry to contact you out of the blue but I wished to provide you with some information regarding our New Clo5e Ratio Gearboxes.
On Friday, at the Mallory Racetrack, two group 6 race bikes managed to break their gear selectors. A selector failure is a serious issue and we are currently looking into the mode of failure and speaking with the manufacturer. We are taking this issue very seriously and will provide updates as we have them.
Both of the bikes concerned are in the 40-45bhp region and were on the track when the failures occurred.
Subject to the assessment of the parts and if indeed the gear selector is inadequate for the task it was designed for then a new version of the selector will be produced as soon as possible. In the meantime, we will not be supplying any new Clo5e Ratio gearboxes until we have had a chance to assess the failures.
Our product testing had involved a seasons racing in a slightly lower powered group 6 engine (approx 35bhp) and a 4,500mile hard road test in a 28bhp engine, plus several unusual event tests (slamming the bike into 1st gear at 50 and 80mph etc).
Based on that experience, I do not believe that fast road use in 30bhp engines would be likely to result in a failure. (One of the group 6 race riders is still running a Clo5e Ratio in his RB25 road bike and is 3000 miles in). I plan to continue to run the Clo5e ratio boxes we have in our own bikes. However, everyone has to judge their own acceptable level of risk. Anyone who wishes to return their gearbox will, of course, be given a full refund. Equally, if we experience any failures in lower powered/road engines I will provide another update and immediately issue a warning.
Sorry for placing doubt in your mind, but I believe it is only correct to provide you with what information I have. We are working on this at the moment and will let you know what we find. Best
Regards
Ben”
Casa Performance available through the SLUK Shop
Well done AF, far better to recall them than deny there’s any issues like others might do.
Can’t say fairer than that, we all know we are taking a bit of a chance with new products, especially ones that push the boundaries. Good to see a professional response to the issue
Whilst this is not directly relevant to this article, it would be useful to display the date of this news/letter and perhaps the comments like this, it will help readers understand when this issue occurred and if it was on an older version of the gearbox?
Cheers
This is an issue we’re looking into. All articles used to show the published date but an update has made them vanish. This article was first published in 2017-2018.