H pattern gearbox paddle shifter

[spacer]

looks neat!

i'm interested why you choose separately mounted valves instead of a (more compact) manifold-style mounting? like festo VUVG series for example.

[cmcraeslo]

Hey.

I tried that in the model too. It's just hard to place everything really, It may look simple in the end, but to get there
It would make my unit much bigger and heavier. They're small together, but it's hard to put a big block of valves anywhere in the system and still be within the reasonable size. I'm now trying some miniature valves that would ideally mount directly onto the cylinder, but they flow too slow and have really bad mounting points. The manufactures is designing new valves that have higher flow (100+ l/min) so hopefully I will be able to make it smaller.
Also, these islands are also more expensive than regular piping, not to mention festo valves

If you have any info on where to get miniature valves that flow more than 100 l/min and are reasonably priced, I'd be more than happy to check them out. Or and idea with different valve layout.. I'm still throwing everything together.

Thanks!

[piast9]

Very nice project! From the video at the first post it seems to be working great.

I am by no means a car expert but I realize how they work. I just wonder if another approach wouldn't be easier. Here you use the H-pattern gearbox and attach to it complicated actuators that operate the gearbox controls. How difficult would be another approach - to rebuild the gearbox itself and change the selector mechanism to a drum-type, like in regular sequential gearboxes?

For sure another skills would be required - not mostly electronic/pneumatic but more purely mechanic ones but how the difficulties of these approaches differ?

[cmcraeslo]

Well, I wanted a paddle shifting gadget
I first had a H to sequential converter, so basically sequential shifting, but I wanted to upgrade it to paddle shifting, so I added actuators to the sequential shifter. Then I thought why not just make a paddle shifting so here's why.

That being said, for me to convert this to a sequential gearbox would be much harder so I went with this one. And also, I can mount this to any car I want

[piast9]

That's true. The ease of installation of your solution is a big advantage. And you don't have to mess with really oily bits in the car. Please, do not get me wrong, I don't want to criticize, your project works great and I am sure you know what you are doing and you had a great fun building it.

[cmcraeslo]

That's ok, I always like alternative solutions. This is the only way to make a progress. Thanks!

[fredtome]

Very nice design and works perfectly. Nice idea. I would like to know more about this.

[cmcraeslo]

Sure. I'm happy to share, that's the reason I published this in the first place
What did you want to know?

[mzivtins]

3500euro?

I love this, well made and the video proves it works really nicely, this is not only a cheap and accessible option for track cars, but especially for enthusiast car owners who would kill for a sequential shifting arrangement (this is me all over!)

Given that it uses the standard transmission, can you still get to neutral from any gear? Im guessing that is a stupid question as quite clearly you just reset the valves to what is programmed as the 'neutral' position... how do you engage neutral? pull both paddles?

[fredtome]

I would like to know what you are planning to do with this and if you think that your system could be applied to a road legal car easily.

I would love to have a system to test on a project that I am working on.

[ojlopez]

Marvelous, incredible skill.

[cmcraeslo]

Hey guys.

I think this could be easily installed in a road legal car, except the "legal" part
I've been contacted by a pneumatic expert and we're working on optimizing the system and costs. So far it looks pretty good, we managed to get rid of 3 valves and these multiposition cylinders that cost me a fortune to build, can easily be replaced with different, off the shelf ones. So I should be able to drastically reduce the costs.

I'm actually thinking of publishing the complete tech details/plans and just offer the ECU that manages everything.

There's a N button on the steering wheel (you can see it in the video in the beginning). This button needs to be pressed if I want to shift from N to 1 or N to 1. If I hold N + clutch for 3 seconds, it recovers to neutral from any gear position (valid or invalid)

[mzivtins]

I WANT ONE!!!

If you ever get round to selling these, i would happily fit it to my mazda rotary build, legal or illegal no one looks past the fact my car has no front number plate anyway... i could be hauling a dead body in the back seat, but nothing is as bad as missing a number plate here.

[cmcraeslo]

Hey guys!

Just wanted to post an update of the project. I've now managed to reduce the size a little bit with this 2nd evolution. I will now go into reducing the actuators. Here are few pictures:

[woohoo]

Well it looks impressive!

Much neater than the F1 / Cambiocorsa / Selespeed systems of old.

Will this be adaptable to "all" H shift cars ?