well, I put it in & wired it up tonight...
wow, it works cool... at first it's just the novelty of it, but once you get comfortable with it, it really is nice... enter a turn & knock the left one 2 times... engine braking & come out of the curve reving nice & pulling hard, ready for the right tap... I really like it
saves a lot of braking & will help avoid brake fade when pushing it around hard by engine braking too, I love downshifting it
would sound wiked with an exhaust & intake too I think...
shifting in turns is really easy too, I mean I'm not talking dukes of hazard style hand over hand driving, at speed your only turning the wheel a little & even in tight manuvers it's easy to get used to it real quick. the steering in the fx is really responsive & quick, so your hands are never really out of range unless your pulling a u-turn, but I normally don't shift when making u-turns
up until now I never really paid much attention to the tach, I mean I glanced at it a few times to see what she cruized at a few times maybe, but now the tach has a definate use
after a while it's in your pereferal, & use it to shift too...
everything is pretty safe, I mean between the rev limiters & computer protecting from too violent shifts, you really can't hurt much, but it does make beating it alot more fun
can't wait to uprade the valve body now
the circuit I built does exactly what the shifter does, only need 2 relays...
the circuit connects to the unified meter/ ac control module, which is mounted in the radio stack on 03-05's anyway... I haven't looked at digrams for the 06+, but should be similar.
the relay wiring I used is a double pass thru relay setup, & the stock shifter also functions right thru it, I was switching between the 2 & using them in combination without issues. each relay brakes the manual trigger momentarily & sends the shift pulse, exactly the same way the shifter works. the circiut is fed by the manual trigger. means it does nothing when not in manual mode.
the hard part of installing this is 2 things, the steering wheel needs to be pulled & the radio needs to be pulled. any competent mechanic should be able to install it no problem, if you can pull the wheel & pull the radio you can install this.
as far as the fabrication I don't know, I mean I think people can do this, but that part might be a little intimidating I guess. I'll make up a good pdf guide of the whole project with detailed instuctions, but if anyone really wanted me to make a kit that is all prefabbed & just needs to be installed I could do the whole kit for maybe around $550 or so with all new parts... this would come with relays soldered into color coded harnesses, ready to bolt in & go as it is now, but I havent tyaken into account the relocation of the power tilt button yet really... it looks like I can mount it in the lower cover, but then that would be up to you too do or I'd have to find out what that costs if I was to include that too...
don't know how many would want to spend that much though... again, you can do it yourself for under $200 with your own parts if you can afford the down time, new parts means no down time, I haven't mentioned this anywhere else but here so far, & I couldn't do too many at the same time really, but it would be better to do a few at the same time rather than one at a time too...