jpr's City Goblin - 07/08 LT donor
- Thread starter jpr
- Start date
JeffsGoblin
Goblin Guru
Looks like its riding a little on the low side. How bad is it and what happened?
JeffsGoblin
Goblin Guru
Well that's good! I'm with Lonny, thought something bad happened. When someone says, "So this happened...", it is like a hilljack saying "hey everybody... watch this!" and moments later he's in the hospital.
Desert Sasqwatch
Goblin Guru
Camber looks a little negative, but that may just be an optical aberration from the camera angle?
I agree, especially the RF.
jpr
Well-Known Member
Aaaand, two trips to the DMV later, we're legal!
First trip, the very nice and legitimately helpful manager took my pre-completed Declarations form (engine, transmission, and frame/chassis being the only 3 items required there) and punched in all my info. Asked if I wanted vanity plates (yes). Submitted the form... which the computer choked on with an unintelligible error message. She had a line out the door by the second or third try, so we agreed to table the issue until she could check with State to see what the problem might be.
Second trip (this morning) I was able to meet with the same manager. Punching in my info this time, we rounded down the delivery charge from the exact amount to a whole dollar, e.g. 651. That fixed it! I got my temporary plate printed off, got my registration, and got out of there.
And now we're due for a foot of snow over the next 48ish hours. Just perfect...
eta: Also, yeah, spent some quality time adjusting that turrible alignment. Drives much better now! =)
First trip, the very nice and legitimately helpful manager took my pre-completed Declarations form (engine, transmission, and frame/chassis being the only 3 items required there) and punched in all my info. Asked if I wanted vanity plates (yes). Submitted the form... which the computer choked on with an unintelligible error message. She had a line out the door by the second or third try, so we agreed to table the issue until she could check with State to see what the problem might be.
Second trip (this morning) I was able to meet with the same manager. Punching in my info this time, we rounded down the delivery charge from the exact amount to a whole dollar, e.g. 651. That fixed it! I got my temporary plate printed off, got my registration, and got out of there.
And now we're due for a foot of snow over the next 48ish hours. Just perfect...
eta: Also, yeah, spent some quality time adjusting that turrible alignment. Drives much better now! =)
Desert Sasqwatch
Goblin Guru
Fantastic and job well done. Sorry about the snow this week, but hey you live in the great white north so that is to be expected with exception of the last week in July.
jpr
Well-Known Member
Alright, so I got inspired last week by this thread and since I've been wavering on a manual swap, I thought I'd give it a whirl.
THE PARTS
I ordered just the basic shift module and the gear indicator. In retrospect the plug may have been a good use of money too, if I wanted full auto. More on that in a bit. From order to delivery was about a week. Not bad. The manuals they include are somewhat dense if you're hard of attention, and they didn't include one of the wiring diagrams, but fortunately everything is available online.
THE INSTALL
The whole thing is a case of wires being about 18" short for our application, so a little creativity in locating the gear indicator (comes prewired) and a bit of extending the 4 shifter wires, is in order. Nothing we're not used to, wiring harness warriors all. If you don't completely cut the transmission plug, you don't need the pink wire they provide. Other than that, just follow the wiring diagrams provided, heat shrink and cover the wires you cut so they don't short, put everything back together. I ran my wires through the tunnel (mine's just Cleco'd in place - will install rivnuts or nut plates and screw it in later) and located the new transmission control unit next to the BCM in the passenger footwell. It's also worth mentioning that you must unscrew the top of the module and change the jumper to an -80 series transmission. If you don't, it'll indicate up/down correctly but control the transmission backwards (1st is 4th, 2nd is 3rd, etc). Uh... don't ask me how we figured that one out.
You will need to fab your own gear indicator bracket. I made mine from a piece of 2x2" aluminum angle. If you didn't buy one of their preassembled shift units, you will also need to provide at minimum an up- and down-shift button. Mine are sort of a work in progress. I wanna do paddle shifters but figured I'd get a proof of concept before investing any more time and money into niceties. You can also wire up a TCC engage, Launch Mode select, and brake pedal switch for launch mode. Cute.
THE RESULTS
You still select P, R, N with the "normal" shifter, then any of L, I, D engage our new friend and from there you use the buttons to shift. One avenue for improvement would be to install 4 reed relays on the control lines to switch between the box and the car's TCU - then you could switch into full auto mode if you're just cruising, or manual mode for track use. A clunkier but perhaps less error-prone switching method would be to buy a second transmission plug (available from your local pick 'n' pull or factory new from the kit manufacturer as noted above) and just swap those when you get to the track. In that case you'd need to hook up the power and ground as well, but those should be the only 5 pins required.
This thing really seems worth the money, gives you just about full control over the transmission. A quick test drive showed pretty darn fast shifts with all the benefits that a torque converter provides.
I'll certainly keep everyone updated once I have a couple miles and an autocross or two behind me, but I'm excited for this development!
THE PARTS
I ordered just the basic shift module and the gear indicator. In retrospect the plug may have been a good use of money too, if I wanted full auto. More on that in a bit. From order to delivery was about a week. Not bad. The manuals they include are somewhat dense if you're hard of attention, and they didn't include one of the wiring diagrams, but fortunately everything is available online.
THE INSTALL
The whole thing is a case of wires being about 18" short for our application, so a little creativity in locating the gear indicator (comes prewired) and a bit of extending the 4 shifter wires, is in order. Nothing we're not used to, wiring harness warriors all. If you don't completely cut the transmission plug, you don't need the pink wire they provide. Other than that, just follow the wiring diagrams provided, heat shrink and cover the wires you cut so they don't short, put everything back together. I ran my wires through the tunnel (mine's just Cleco'd in place - will install rivnuts or nut plates and screw it in later) and located the new transmission control unit next to the BCM in the passenger footwell. It's also worth mentioning that you must unscrew the top of the module and change the jumper to an -80 series transmission. If you don't, it'll indicate up/down correctly but control the transmission backwards (1st is 4th, 2nd is 3rd, etc). Uh... don't ask me how we figured that one out.
You will need to fab your own gear indicator bracket. I made mine from a piece of 2x2" aluminum angle. If you didn't buy one of their preassembled shift units, you will also need to provide at minimum an up- and down-shift button. Mine are sort of a work in progress. I wanna do paddle shifters but figured I'd get a proof of concept before investing any more time and money into niceties. You can also wire up a TCC engage, Launch Mode select, and brake pedal switch for launch mode. Cute.
THE RESULTS
You still select P, R, N with the "normal" shifter, then any of L, I, D engage our new friend and from there you use the buttons to shift. One avenue for improvement would be to install 4 reed relays on the control lines to switch between the box and the car's TCU - then you could switch into full auto mode if you're just cruising, or manual mode for track use. A clunkier but perhaps less error-prone switching method would be to buy a second transmission plug (available from your local pick 'n' pull or factory new from the kit manufacturer as noted above) and just swap those when you get to the track. In that case you'd need to hook up the power and ground as well, but those should be the only 5 pins required.
This thing really seems worth the money, gives you just about full control over the transmission. A quick test drive showed pretty darn fast shifts with all the benefits that a torque converter provides.
I'll certainly keep everyone updated once I have a couple miles and an autocross or two behind me, but I'm excited for this development!
JSATX
Goblin Guru
This sounds awesome. It’s taken very little track time to realize how much slower I am with the manual transmission. Paddle shifters would be a massive improvement.
So does it let you redline or does the auto still take over like in most oem autos with manual option.
The Saab 93 manual mode is pretty good, but it still takes over by shifting before redline, and not letting you down shift too aggressively.
So does it let you redline or does the auto still take over like in most oem autos with manual option.
The Saab 93 manual mode is pretty good, but it still takes over by shifting before redline, and not letting you down shift too aggressively.
jpr
Well-Known Member
You can bounce this thing off redline all day long - it's full manual control of the shift solenoids.
k.rollin
Goblin Guru
When I was talking with Jeff at Engineered Performance, I seem to remember him mentioning using a DPDT switch to allow for transitioning between manual and automatic control. It's been awhile since I spoke with him though, so my memory as to the specifics may be off.
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jpr
Well-Known Member
That'd make sense, or maybe a DP4T switch since there's 4 control lines that go in. It's definitely something I wanna look into.
Briann1177
Goblin Guru
Will it do a money shift? Not that you'd ever want it to. Just curious.