Dispelling Adapter Mythologies of Cast Aluminum

vs.

Billet Aluminum and Fabricated Steel

Our adapters are founded "near net" from pure 356 aluminum and treated to a T6 hardness condition. 356 is an alloy of aluminum developed to offer the strength and refinement of extruded alloys. As such it is referred to as an "aircraft grade" alloy. Novak adapters feature unusually generous flanges, ribs, and gussets where applicable. We then machine our adapters to tolerances that exceed all comparable OEM and aftermarket automotive adapters. Novak has achieved a level of strength in our adapters that, like our guarantee, is second to none.

There are levels of misinformation ballied about on the topic of adapter materials and manufacturing methods; two that are particularly poorly based.

Some companies claim that they make a stronger adapter by virtue of it being machined from a billet of extruded aluminum. This weak line of logic put forth on billet aluminum vs. cast aluminum breaks down as soon as one realizes the engineering fallacy of joining a cast transmission to a cast transfer case with a billet adapter. We believe that it is better to invest our customer's smarter purchases into better design than into a pile of chips in the bottom of some third-party machine shop's milling center.

Other companies claim that adapters of welded plate steel components are stronger. We have garnered several former owners of these types of budget adapters due to significant downfalls in concentricity and parallelism tolerances and the destructive effects this had on their mating gearboxes. Strength becomes a distantly secondary point in these situations.

The above methods are more often the result of a lack of resources to develop the patterns and production tooling to make a truly and practically unbreakable adapter assembly. Our adapters are superior in that we can cast in strength adding features that are unreachable by machines or poorly served by welds.