Zf Meritor, LLC

Thomas Balamucki

Landon Ball

The present invention provides a transmission including a main gear box and an auxiliary gear box secured to the main box. The auxiliary gear box includes an auxiliary shaft supporting an auxiliary gear with a clutch collar support on the auxiliary shaft adjacent to the auxiliary gear. The clutch collar is selectively actuatable between engaged and disengaged auxiliary gear positions. A piston housing is connected to the auxiliary gear box and supports solenoids fluidly connected to a piston on a shift shaft. The auxiliary box includes a bore therein supporting the shift shaft. The shift shaft is moveable axially between first and second positions in response to actuation of the solenoids corresponding to the engage and disengaged auxiliary gear positions. The shift shaft supports a shift fork that coacts with the shift collar. The shirt shaft includes an annular groove and a seal is arranged in the annular groove between the auxiliary box housing and the shift shaft for separating transmission fluid from actuating fluid within the piston.

Transmission auxiliary box seal system

An auxiliary gear box for a transmission is provided including a piston housing having a first and second bore. First and second pistons are respectively arranged within the first and second bores and separate each of the first and second bores into two chambers. First and second shift shafts respectively extends from the first and second pistons and are each connected to shift forks. The exposed surface area of the piston in the chamber having the shift shaft is less than the exposed surface area of the piston on the chamber opposite the shift shaft. As a result, if both chambers of a bore are pressurized, the piston will move in the direction of the chamber having the shift shaft since a greater force will be generated on the piston in the chamber without the shift shaft. A three actuator arrangement is used to selectively actuate the pistons.

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Laurinburg, NC, United States of America

Thomas Balamucki