Hand Clutch / Shifter

[Ian Young]

Hi all,

This year, I am redisgning our shifter mechanism. We are trying to go with a "butterfly" design with one lever for upshifts and one lever that clutches and downshifts similar to the one photo of Texas A&M I found on the forums. I am still a little confused about the geometry. We are trying to have both levers be pulled to the driver, but i am unsure how the far lever will push on the shifter cable after pulling the clutch cable.


Thanks

[KevinD]

the butterfly shifter A&M and us (UTA), has pull for upshifting and push for downshifting (well, i can speak for UTA but not A&M...). i don't know if you would want to have both up and downshifting performed by pulling one or the other lever... i could see grabbing the wrong lever and revving the engine till it pops. squeezing the two levers together is clutching.

[Ian Young]

Thanks,

so, do u guys squeeze them together to clutch before downshifting, or does the clutching action occur mechanically by pushing the downshift lever.

[KevinD]

if you push the lever closest to the driver only, it will actually squeeze the levers together automatically, thus clutching and then downshifting in one stroke. you can clutchless downshift by pushing the forward lever only if you please.

up shifting is just the opposite. pulling the lever closest to the driver will upshift without clutch, but pulling the forward lever will sqeeze the two levers together thus clutch and shift.

[Ian Young]

Thanks again

I think i now have a good understanding of this and I can get to making a design

[Rob.C]

any chance of some pictures of said devices?

cheers

[ben]

Rob - When UTA came to the first FStudent they had a butterfly shifter and #79's team copied it. The one they built should be in a box in the lab :-)

Ben

[KevinD]

this is A&M's shifter from the previous thread. i don't have any pictures of ours anywhere for some reason...

http://www.v6performance.net/gallery/uploads/9276/Hand_Clutch_2.JPG

[Ian Young]

Ok,

I have another question. when you push the lever close to the driver, it seems like it would push the outer casing of the clutch cable back. Wouldn't that be a problem? I guess i dont really understand how the levers would squeeze together just by pushing on the lever.

[Steve Yao]

The two levers are coupled such that they always actuate together; both pulling the cable out and pushing the housing back.

Also, pushing the cable housing back is actually no different than fixing the housing and pulling the cable...

[drivetrainUW-Platt]

any picts of UTA's setup?

[osubeaver]

Our shift lever was set up so that pushing forward up shifted, and pulling back downshifted (yeah i know thats reverse of how a lot of people like it), as well as actuating the clutch with the downshift. We also had a lever attached to the shift lever that would just actuate the clutch, but nobody ever used it because once you pulled it in, you couldnt shift to say nuetral for exampel - a bit of a design oversight. The downshifts worked great though with a little throttle blip.