Well peps, I was wondering how hard would it be to make your own shift light for your mini. I was thinking about putting it on the top of the tech of the rpm's guage. It would be that red peice on the top where their would be an Alarm system for the R56. Does any body know if their is a post on this because i cant seem to find one! Lol

 

Not sure it would be worth the time and effort to do so. There is a lot of electical work required to do so. You can buy the JCW one online for a pretty reasonable price. I got one of ebay.co.uk for $120 (no pounds)shipped. There is a dealer there that lists them pretty regularly, and he negotiates, but you would have to time right.

I will tell you know, that even if I had the electrical know how, it would not be worth my time to try and do, because I am certain it would look horrible it I could figure it out. Then on the other hand, some people have a lot of time on their hand.

 

Thanks

 

Drop by sometime, I'll show you when to shift.

Generally when the tach hand points to around "6"....

 

Lol ya thanks haha When i do, do that it usually looses alot of top end power at around 6,500. haha jk Ya i just want one because they seem cool, but also i dont feel like spending about 200+ on a JCW one

 

...if you could find an inexpensive LED one, you could just rewire the LEDs, keeping the original electronics.

Otherwise, unless you want to develop one, you'll need schematics for a shift light, then you'd have to cut the circuit yourself and... yeah. A lot of work.

 

but it was a royal PITA! IF you look inside the tach, it's pretty tight and all the LEDs are surface mount.

As a shameless plug for my own stuff, I just posted a bit of what's coming for the R56 here. The problem with the JCW and other basic shift lights is that they're really only to keep from over revving the engine. If you look at race computers they give a different shift point per gear based on the gear ratios and the torque curve of the engine....

Anyway, I think that you could open up the R56 tack and steal the light. You'd have to get a shift light and gut it to fire the alarm light. The RPM signal is available on pin 9 of the OBD-II connector. The RPM signal is encoded in CAN messages for running the tach.....

If any of you want, I can supply a bare shift light board that you could wire... It would need power, ground and RPM. You'd program the shift point via USB.

Anyway, there are lots of ways to skin this cat. Feel free to PM me if you want any help.... IF you still want to roll your own, feel free and ask me for help if you think I can give you any....

Matt