Questions about shifters kit

[MNSUFsae]

Have any teams used Shift FX (air shifter) or Kliktronic(electrical shifter)? Are is there reliability?

[MNSUFsae]

Have any teams used Shift FX (air shifter) or Kliktronic(electrical shifter)? Are is there reliability?

[MrSwa]

A lot of teams build their own sytem. It's a to cheaper. One thing we learned is to use C02 instead of compressed air. We had compressed air and a leaky system which equals not a lot of shift time.

[Mike Sadie]

its easier to resolve a leaky system with compressed air than a frozen reg with co2. Be extra careful of bottle placement and orientation so you don't pull up liquid.

[Brian S]

We made our own last year, and it was really easy to set up. We purchased a piston with two valves on it and built steering wheel mounted paddles. It worked fairly well. I think the whole thing cost around $500, but could be wrong on the price.

Here are some pictures:
http://sae.wsu.edu/media/07_construction_2/images/dsc02123.jpg

http://sae.wsu.edu/media/07_construction_2/images/dsc02127.jpg

http://sae.wsu.edu/media/07_first_drive/images/img_4851.jpg

[Rob Comer]

We had a electronic shift kit donated to our team but have not found a decent solution to get it to shift to neutral. We're running an f4i, I don't know how you could accomplish the "half gear" of neutral with a mechanism that always throws fully. For the time being the shifter has just been relagated to dyno duty. I have heard of some teams rearranging gears but is there a simpler way?

[MrSwa]

Neutral is pretty easy to find when you're useing your arm. Honestly, you don't have to have a neutral sensor, it is nice, but you can get by without it. A person's arm does a great job. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

[Biggy72]

Just don't run too high of pressure and it's pretty easy to shift into neutral. Just make sure you have a neutral light somewhere and you should be able to hit it pretty quickly with a really short and light hit of your shifter. We had everything working pretty well between 200 and 150 psi.

Also I've heard of a number of people talking about icing stuff up using CO2, but we never had any problems at all and our bottle was mounted horizontally.

[Rob Comer]

I could see it working out with a pnuematic system, however we have a electric (ie electromagnet ram) shifter designed really for a harley. Its pretty hard to limit its throw unless we're able to cut the power to it slightly.

[Dennis Seichter]

Concerning the neutral finding problem: I don't want to reveal to much sensitive information http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif, but it is possible to run the system constantly at maximum pressure (you have to regulate the system pressure manually, and you want it to be maximum in order to achieve minimum shift times) and still get to the neutral gear. Last year, we hat a little "neutral finder" button on our dashboard, and it worked fine. All you need is a microcontroller and a capable electronics guy..

[Adam Howard]

Without saying too much, instead of making the shifter do a half shift, you could make the transmission/shift barrel accept a full shift into neutral....we run a Shift FX, with our own controller.

[Thrainer]

If you're talking about a solenoid, you can pulse the current to get less than full movement. Do you have sensors installed to know where the solenoid axle is?