Shift Kits?

[stormintigers]

hey all, not to sure if this is the place to ask but, i was just going through some classifieds are i saw this guy selling his R34 gtt. http://www.skylinesaustralia.com/forums/R3...74#entry5431174

My question is that he says that he put in ""MV Automatics stage 2 Shift kit installed"" but his car is already tiptronic, so only the valve body got put in???

[baby34]

makes the auto shift quicker i believe

[STATUS]

Have a customer with the same kit, we sent the auto across to MV and had auto built and shift kit.

Best mod for a R34 GTT auto fullstop.

nice shifts in normal mode but quick wheel spinning shifts into gear @ full noise.

[stormintigers]

Have a customer with the same kit, we sent the auto across to MV and had auto built and shift kit.

Best mod for a R34 GTT auto fullstop.

nice shifts in normal mode but quick wheel spinning shifts into gear @ full noise.

Sorry, for playin dumb, but whats the kit??? when he has tiptronic already in the car....

I thought you could only get the full shift kit, is when you have an auto not tiptronic, the kit makes it into tiptronic, (or so to speak).... Cause when i ring up MV Auto's he told me that i could only get the valve body, since my car (R34 Gt-t) has tiptronic..... can someone make this clearer for me please???

[Kinkstaah]

Sorry, for playin dumb, but whats the kit??? when he has tiptronic already in the car....

I thought you could only get the full shift kit, is when you have an auto not tiptronic, the kit makes it into tiptronic, (or so to speak).... Cause when i ring up MV Auto's he told me that i could only get the valve body, since my car (R34 Gt-t) has tiptronic..... can someone make this clearer for me please???

It will make the triptronic box shift a lot faster than it does normally. The rest of the operation should be very much the same.

You can't get much clearer than that

[STATUS]

Sorry, for playin dumb, but whats the kit??? when he has tiptronic already in the car....

I thought you could only get the full shift kit, is when you have an auto not tiptronic, the kit makes it into tiptronic, (or so to speak).... Cause when i ring up MV Auto's he told me that i could only get the valve body, since my car (R34 Gt-t) has tiptronic..... can someone make this clearer for me please???

tiptronic is just an electronic gimmic, all it is is a manual shifter setup and a set of steering wheel controls. Tiptronic has nothing to do with the auto performance it is just a method for changing gears.. in fact you can fit "tiptronic" to any auto gearbox that has electronic solenoids to control gear changes.

A shift kit is an internal mechanical modification which shortens gear changes and increases shift pressures so it can handle more power and stop the terrible flaring r34 auto's have std.

[bubba]

tiptronic is just an electronic gimmic, all it is is a manual shifter setup and a set of steering wheel controls. Tiptronic has nothing to do with the auto performance it is just a method for changing gears.. in fact you can fit "tiptronic" to any auto gearbox that has electronic solenoids to control gear changes.

A shift kit is an internal mechanical modification which shortens gear changes and increases shift pressures so it can handle more power and stop the terrible flaring r34 auto's have std.

^^ what he said

You can give your auto a bit of a mild shift kit if you are competent enough to remove the valvebody and know how to fit welsh plugs.

I had my gearbox guy do it to mine, remove the 1-2 and 2-3 accumulator pistons (basically sprung pistons that are there to dampen the fluid flow and give a nice soft shift) and replace with welsh plugs.

The next level up is removing balls and springs and drilling holes bigger to increase flow which is pretty much what the MV autos stage 2 kit does I believe.

The welsh plugs in the accumulators actually made a huge difference, especially on the 1-2 shift. It doesn't flare any more at all and while it is a little harsh, it's quite acceptable for my daily driver. No more piss farting around, tell it to change, it changes and just GTF in there. Cost me bugger all, about an hour or so labour and some fluid.

[turboedsloth]

I've fitted the MV kit to a 33 down here in bunbury, i took some pics of the welsh plugs before and after will try and find them. The MV kits are just a simple shift kitted valvebody exactly like bubba and status have mentioned, the hardest thing about them is not breaking the plastic electrical connections inside

[too_much_boost]

How much difference would there be (in both power handling and harshness) between just doing the welshplug into accumulator trick and the full St2 MV auto kit? Its for my wifes car so I don't know if i want too harsh a gearchange for her. I have a St2 shiftkit in my car and its probably a bit harsh for her.

[turboedsloth]

the stage 2 kit was firm but not to rough for the guy i did it for, and his missus even commented that it was nicer to drive. As for power handling/harshness it all depends on how big you drill relief holes, and which other mods you leave out. I've found with a few builders that i've worked with, each one is different in the way he sets stuff up. Now i just do it from home in the garage when i get time and space to do it for the fun of it

[bubba]

I'm not sure how harsh just the welsh plugs would be in a RWD application as I think the 4WD dampens it a little bit.

TBH I wouldn't want any harsher shifts in my 4WD daily, if it was a 2WD toy car then I wouldn't care but the 2WD toy car is manual so..

[too_much_boost]

Do you remember what size welsh plugs you used?

[bubba]

Do you remember what size welsh plugs you used?

Nope, I paid my gearbox guy to do it as auto's are all hoodoo voodoo as far as I'm concerned

[too_much_boost]

the stage 2 kit was firm but not to rough for the guy i did it for, and his missus even commented that it was nicer to drive. As for power handling/harshness it all depends on how big you drill relief holes, and which other mods you leave out. I've found with a few builders that i've worked with, each one is different in the way he sets stuff up. Now i just do it from home in the garage when i get time and space to do it for the fun of it

Any chance you could go into some more detail with this process?

[turboedsloth]

Found some photos, vehicle was a 34 GT sedan.

dirty body is standard, clean is MV, the welsh plugs supplied in the kits, 2 black plugs are shift accumulators, and shift solenoids getting swapped over.

[attachmen

t=304959:05052009501.jpg]

[too_much_boost]

Thanks, but I was more referring to the DIY bit, eg which holes are the relief holes and how large you need to drill them.

[turboedsloth]

This is the sort of kit that you can get (these photos are for an RE4R01A early 33 and patrol boxes) but are essentially the same thing, each kit comes with very detailed instructions on which holes to drill, how big to drill them, which springs you can and cant replace.

These kits can be purchased from any company that deals with transmission parts.

Computer wont let me upload the pics

[bubba]

Those 2 welsh plugs are all that I had done to mine as we didn't have the info. re: what holes to drill and what else to remove.

My gearbox guy had done plenty of 33's but no 34 boxes, they are a wee bit different as there is an extra couple of solenoids.

[redevil]

I work for a car dealership and work very closely with a few performance transmission shops here on the Gold Coast. The MV kit has had very mixed reports with alot of cars having issues after installing the kit. The issue is alot of people buy the kit and think oh yay shift kit lets chuck it in with a new filter and my box is good for 500hp...

Not true, the biggest issue and killer to the 'RE' gearboxes is the accumulation factor referred to previously. The accumulation points in effect cause a buffering in the flow of fluid causing the box to have smoother shifts but by doing this it delays the engaging on the gears which therefore has the same effect as if you were riding the clutch in an manual. It cause premature wear on the clutch packs aswell as potential gear wear due to incorrect engagement.

The first and biggest thing to do to build a gearbox to be able to handle power is to removed the accumulation points (i.e. as previously described using welsch plugs) after this a slight upgrade in the valve body i.e. drilling slightly larger holes will then take up the slack in the now allowed for flow capacity of the box (MV shift kits are a waste of money and time better going to a competant transmission shop and they should be able to correctly build and modify your box to suit your cars power output and your desired effect, MV's are a generic thing and is like buying a aftermarket computer pretuned and just using it, it will offer some improvement but you are better of having a tune specific to your vehicle) After upgrading the flow if you are talking about running some decent power say for arguements sake 300 + hp ATW then it would be worthwile looking at upgrading the belts to kevlar and dual clutch packs.

Also just as a side note it is worthwile on the R33's were they run both a side radiator cooler and an auxilary oil cooler for the transmission. It is worthwile bypassing the radiator cooler and running the oil cooler alone. The amount of times I have seen the side walls of radiators fail causing coolant to go into the transmission, it is definetly worthwile doing especially since some of the radiators are over 17 yrs old. It's better to be safe than sorry. (This will not improve the shift quality, but will help protect your gearbox)

[KiwiRS4T]

Also just as a side note it is worthwile on the R33's were they run both a side radiator cooler and an auxilary oil cooler for the transmission. It is worthwile bypassing the radiator cooler and running the oil cooler alone. The amount of times I have seen the side walls of radiators fail causing coolant to go into the transmission, it is definetly worthwile doing especially since some of the radiators are over 17 yrs old. It's better to be safe than sorry. (This will not improve the shift quality, but will help protect your gearbox)

The heat exchanger in the radiator is important as it helps bring the auto trans up to operating temperature more quickly - and the majority of trips are less than 10km. If you are worried about water getting into the auto trans (and I have never seen it myself but I'll take your word for it that it happens) then you would be better advise people to replace their ten year old radiators before they fail.