Surprising source of 9" gearsets

[6R07mi]

While on a work assignment at one of our plants in NC I was surprised to find a source of Ford 9" gearsets.

Our company that was formerly Rockwell has 70+% of the class 7, 8 HD truck axle market.
These are 19k up thru 58k tandem axle products that are under most HD truck OEM's.

Also many transit, coach, fire trucks and my area of responsibility Defense use many of our axle, brake, driveline and related components.

I was working along side one of our "Gear Technology" design engineers and got talking about cars and I mentioned my history with Mustangs and Shelby American.

He responded that his 1st projects a couple of years ago was setting up production at this NC plant of "Mortorsport" gearset production, specifically Ford 9". So he took me over to the area where the gearset is cut and then lapped to establish the contact pattern. 
So you must understand these 9" gearsets look like toy parts next to the truck 16, 17 & 18" ring gears also going along on the conveyor. 
It turns out the primary customers for the gearsets are Strange and Moser, needless to say I was quite surprised!

you just never know what turns up !

regards,
jim p

[98SVT - was 06GT]

I think that Rockwell also made the 4.11 10" set that is in the Speedway Engineering OC in my GT1 car.

[warwick]

What is interesting to me is the Gleason machine. Early in my career (70s) I was on a call to Gleason Works in Rochester NY. Impressive building: marble lobby reeked on the 30's and success. I didn't really see the whole story. The next time I saw my father -who ran a large machine shop the made marine reduction transmissions I asked him. He had grown up in the age-apprenticed and worked at Brown & Sharpe. He told me that Gleason Works was behind hypoid gear design. They figured out the math, design principles and had the patents. Gleason was one of the foundations of hypoid gear production.  Until I saw your picture I didn't even think they were still making equipment in the 70s forget today.