Hey everyone, being the Electrical/Mechanical Engineer that I am I'm always looking at things from and engineering stand point and the other day I took the shift boot ring off to look down in there and see what was going on in there with the cables. Since I've always had directly linked cars in the past modifying past a short shifter was always impossable. Well, with this cable setup I'm pretty confident that I could come up with a sequential unit to replace the stock H pattern shifting unit.

Now, a couple quick questions:

1) Does anyone have any diagrams of the system as is? There's still a ton of stuff I would have to look at before claiming that I could do it for sure.

2) Would anyone actually be interested in something like this? I would more than likely be using electonics in it so F1 paddels and a gear indicator display wouldn't be out of the question either. Anyone interested in either of those?

3) Would any vendors be interested in the manufacuring, testing and distribution? M7? Webb?

Well, thanks... I look forward to your feedback.

 

I would be interersted. Can you keep the cost bellow say $300?

 

It's way too early to be able to even ball park a price, I'm not totally sure how everything would work just yet. $300 seems like a reasonable goal though. Maybe a little more if you wanted paddels or gear read-out. Once I get a diagram of, or someone willing to donate a shifter mechanism I'll know MUCH more within a couple days.

 

Wow, I was just being facetious, but on any endeavor like that you have to ask what it will cost before you can tell if there is a market for it. For a reasonable price and especially if it was reliable, I would certainly consider it.

 

It wouldn't be too hard of a project I don't think. I've worked on Forumla SAE race cars that use an electronic shifting mechanism and it wasn't hard at all. Granted they're already a sequential gearbox I think that it would just take a little more mechanical trickery and a bit more coding of a micro controller. I think that the $300 range is pretty do-able. I certainly wouldn't expect a huge profit from it and development would be all free in my spare time.

But as before, I'm not claiming anything until I have some time to work out the specifics.

 

This link might help some http://www.realoem.com/bmw/partgrp.d...21&hg=25&fg=05
I don't see the a diagram of the shifter assy.

 

AMG,
If you need a shifter assembly I might have one lying around or you could ask Onasled who traded his out I believe for a better one. Either way I am totally there and would love to have this option but did nto think that anyone would want to attempt this. I was so disapointed after trading our E46 M3 SMG in for the MCS that it did not have a SMG option. But I would be highly interested in how you are going to accomplish this. I have taken the whole shifter mechanism apart os if you want to know more just ask.
Thanks for being the first to do this.

 

this would be a great mod and I for one would want to have it done on my MCS...approx. $300 more or less seems like a decent price

 

RacinBMW, It would be exactly like the SMG, you'd have to still use the clutch between shifts but it would be shifted electronically (at least for this version, maybe in the future a clutchless system could be made.) I have some limited but good information from the link that th3118 posted but having a mechanism to play around with would be very helpfull for dimenstions and things. PM sent.

 

Just curious. Since you still have to manually clutch, would the shifting mechanism induce more latency into the shift cycle. I am not an engineer, so this is an honest question.

 

It would just have a gear lever which would just act as a two way "button" for upshift or downshift. The electronics can react just as fast as your brain moving the shift lever around. so you can still let up the clutch just as fast as if you were shifting normally. Even with the paddels it wouldn't take any longer, sure, it wouldn't be as fast a F1 or SMG style because of the fact you would still need to use the clutch normally but it'd be neat.

There would also be a safety switch so that you wouldn't be able to shift without the clutch being pressed. And probably a double tap feature to get into reverse. For anyone worried about functional problems.

 

Nice, I like what I am hearing so far.

 

I've seen this before on a VW rabbit. Had a good look at it. Just a few solenoids at the tranny controlling the shifters. The shift lever has nothing to do with this system and studying that won't help you at all. You need to either get a tranny or just clean away some stuff in the engine bay and so you can get a good look at the shifters on the tranny. Have someone shift through the gears and you will understand just what you'll need to do.

Not sure I would put this in my racecar because now a whole lot of electric parts are in the mix. It would be an interesting project though and if it proved reliable then I would consider it.

 

I don't want to make it be a tranny mount unit. That's how it was on both SAE cars I've delt with and install isn't easy or reversable. If it was just a replacemnt unit for the shift assembly then people could install it on their own and put it back to stock if they wanted.

I have the legistics figured out. I just need more info about the shifter assembly and I can start to model parts and do some electrical development.

 

Here's a company that makes a sequential-shift transmission, but only for front-engine/rear-drive cars. It costs $10K, but includes the entire tranny.

http://www.rase-products.com/rje220.html

 

Just stumbled across this, any updates?

 

I would most deffinately be interested in this. My car is getting ready to be down for a tear down. What all pieces do you need?

 

I'd be interested. They have these for the Lotus elise, but check the price! Yow, $2800!

http://www.sector111.com/handler.cfm...nction=product

 

This would be an awesome upgrade i would definately buy one...