6 Speed Extended Shifter

[Twenny Benson]

Afternoon all, what a pleasant surprise to find a new fab's section. I thought I would kick off with the first of many fabrication sub projects for my S2 coop resto / budget track build. I have a big interest in fabrication & machining and love to make my own things so I thought I would make a start by designing my extended shifter, work on the car has been touch & go due to the weather being awful so whilst the rain pours I have been busy behind my CAD screen with a brew.

The first revision of the shifter was quickly improved upon, here it is just for the hell of it.



Now it know its not a completely original design but hey, it'll work. I decided to preload the central pivot so it doesn't rattle about when the car is driven, this lead to the following changes......



Different CAD screens as I like to a bit at work We use Bentley powerdraft here which is *****! AutoCAD ftw.

So that's what it looks like, it still needs some thought about the reverse lock out actuation but it will likely be a lever of some sort to pull the pin back above the central pivot.

The actual shifter shaft is about 400mm long, the throw has been reduced to almost half of a stock shifter hence the pivot height has to be raised above the tunnel to acheive this, I plan to design it so that I will bolt in to any S2 & maybe B5 shifter cut-out in the tunnel.

Now to the actual construction. All the shafts will be made from silver steel and retained with circlips for a clean look. The shafts will run in oilite bushes for silky smoothness, the pivot block will be machined from alu and hard anodized for sexyness. The shifter shaft will be fabricated from either stainless or mild & chemcially blacked, the shaft will be made up of four pieces all welded together using pulsed TIG.

Progress will continue as long as the rain keeps fallin! It's also a good distraction to actually getting some work done!

any thoughts, comments or criticism's?

[speeding-g60]

ummm, yes please i will take one

not asking to buy one, admiring the work. i am waiting for one to be released really soon from a company....

[Thuppu]

Is this a plug and play shifter for the 01E transmission? Do you fabricate all the mechanisms that that moves the links? Really interesting indeed!

[Rusty]

Cant wait to see this in the flesh - good work for sure

[quattrofrank]

Kinda like the same system I have in my s2. Works really good

[my2000apb]

ummm, yes please i will take one

not asking to buy one, admiring the work. i am waiting for one to be released really soon from a company....

anymore info on that?

[Jonnybravo]

Awesome stuff.

This new forum is going to be great !

[Twenny Benson]

Wow, I wasn't expecting such interest, thanks for the comments chaps. I agree this fab section should be awesome, it all depends how much people are willing to share

@ Thuppu. I have no idea what they will fit, I have reverse engineered this from the 6 speed shifter in my ABY coupe if that helps, It should work in any car to be fair unless the shifter ratio changes dramatically. As for the mechanism, I will make everything in the drawing, the preload spring is a inlet valve spring from a 1.8T this is still in design, I have no idea if it works! In theory it should unless I have drastically over looked something. I plan to rough together a prototype to test first before throwing money at it.


@ Quattrofrank, more pics please that looks really nice, is that something you made?

Pic of the pivot block, might make it easier to understand how it will work.



I'm undecided weather to fabricate the shifter or machine it from billet & anodise it, I know which will look better but I also know what the cost difference will be lol.

My intention is purely to share with you guys the things I make for my S2 project hence reinforcing the idea of a Fab's section, any ideas are welcomed that would improve the shifter.

The one thing that I still need to figure out is how to actuate the cable that will retract the reverse lockout pin from the limit stop. I have seen this done plenty of times with a simple lever (think brake lever of a bicycle) but it won't look as slick. An internal mechanism is possible with a proper pushdown gear knob but this will add to the complexity a bit, any thoughts?

[Thuppu]

Ok, somehow I was thinking about a sequential shift system. So this would be a shifter with the standard H-pattern? Propably a short shift?

[Twenny Benson]

Argh I see, now that would be tricky! No this is purely an extended short shifter.

[Thuppu]

I bet this would be a really cool looking shifter, and I hope it works well. For example the 034 short shifter for UrS4/6 isn't perfect and has some issues, you propably has to diy to get a good one.

[Twenny Benson]

Thats all I wanted really, something a bit different. There are similar out there but there expensive, this should be quite cheap to put together. I hoping it will look quite extreme and be nice to use, its about 490mm from the lower pivot to the top of the gear knob so it is huge! The mock up will see how this works out, but the finished article should make for a nice precise gear shift and a very tiny gate

[Twenny Benson]

Back to Autocad again, much better. I thought I would post up an image of the theoretical throw with this shifter, its just under half the throw of a stock shifter



So you should be able see how simple this works by now as you can see both pivots, very simple indeed. But simple is good right?

I will make a start on the prototype tomorrow if its still raining!

[Twenny Benson]

Right managed to knock together a lashup of the shifter for testing. I printed the bits out 1:1 and cut them out, stuck to card marked it out on some sheet and cut them out.



Magnets work well if you have fists of sausage!







I then stitched them together, corner welds on 1mm sheet while hungover is challenging!





Next up I need to make a testrig with the shifter box / tunnel cut out from a donor shell and the gearbox and see if it will work. To be continued......

[Thuppu]

Sweet.