I have 3 shaft gearboxes with bearings on all the drives and they are sweet. If someone starts making these with four shafts then they would be great in WWII armor. Like Gary says though, on the stamped boxes count the shafts, as when someone started calling HL standard gears as 3:1 a whole bunch of confusion was born. Gary came up with the shaft count as a better identifier, and it is what I use now as well.

WSN

It is just easier to count the shafts then to have to tell the story of why 3:1 and 4:1 are exactly the same gearbox to us old timers who referred to the 3 shaft boxes as standard gears, and the 3:1 as lower geared 4 shaft version. The reason we called them 3:1 was because the out put shaft turned 3 times slower then the standard boxes. Someone then came on here and started calling the standard gears 3:1 and the lower ration gearboxes 4:1. You could tell when someone entered the hobby just by how they identified these gears It was mass confusion until Gary identified it would be easier to identify the two gearboxes by the shafts. I am sure more then one guy has bought 3:1 gears thinking he was getting a lower ratio only find they were exactly the same as what he already had.