Push Button Shift

Has anyone ever attempted to rig up some sorta push button shifting system for a TH transmission? e.g. 700R4, TH350, TH400... I was originally looking at the Shifnoid electric solenoid shifters - but I'd like to go a few steps further - remove the shifter entirely and have some sorta mechanism that is actuated by 2 push buttons on the steering wheel to up/down shift. A linear actuator may work but programming it to travel the right distance to control a short shifter cable would be difficult, using a servo directly on the transmissions shifter shaft would work but there's no way to create a Reverse lockout to prevent accidental R/P engagement.

I'm determined to try this, I've driven a Ferrari 360 Modena with F1 style shift before and I'd love to achieve something close to this on a GM transmission.

I know the 4L60E's have an electronic valve body, but I dont think it'd be very easy to tap into it to control up and down shifts with a pushbutton.

Any ideas are welcome.

I think its FAST that makes the electronic controller for the 4L60E and 4L80E trannies. It supposedly has an optional button shift feature. The green/brown "streetfighter" camaro in PHR had the thing set up with the button shift. I think that is a sweet idea...wonder why its not on more cars.

Got a link to FAST website?

http://www.fuelairspark.com/

Originally posted by kmook
http://www.fuelairspark.com/

Something like this would be great when tied into a manual valve body, especially for guys who like to do a bit of lapping or autox or solo1.

Mark me down as another guy who would like to find a way to make this work.

I've wondered to myself just how those shift apparatus work that are in some of the newer cars. I know Chrysler has them; I'm pretty sure a number of imports have them as well. They have a gate parallel to the main that allows for shifting with a push/pull action.

I can't imagine that the trannies have been completely re-worked to do this, although it is possible, but this struck me as a place to begin to look. Haven't had time yet, and more importantly, I don't know where to begin looking, since I'm sure none of the local tranny shops have worked with these enough to fully understand their functioning and how that might be adapted to older trannies.

Interesting stuff though, and it would be really nice for a street/strip/autocross/solo1 car.

This is not a simple task. Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to discuss most of what I know in this field, but I will suggest that you pay very careful attention to the safety aspects of this project. Setting up an actuator to move the manual shaft isn't the tough part - it's trying to avoid failures, and determining a strategy for dealing with them.

Keeping a standard shifter with cable actuation and simply tapping into the solenoids would be a much safer and easier approach. The manual shows you which solenoids need to be activated for each forward gear, and it'd be easy to develop a controller with some discrete logic to drive them in a sequential manner (obviously, such a controller would also need to decouple the PCM from the valve body when in the sequential mode). The line pressure should probably be set to the maximum while shifting in this mode - this is easily performed by simply disconnecting it from the PCM (a lack of drive current sets the line pressure to the maximum; line pressure drops with increasing current). The PCM will probably have a diagnostics issue with all of this :)

Originally posted by Eric Bryant
This is not a simple task.

Somehow I guessed it wouldn't be; that is another reason why I haven't jumped off the deep end, trying to figure out how it might be done. It would take me months of spare time, I'm sure since I know almost nothing about this stuff to begin with. :D

Originally posted by Janny
It would take me months of spare time, I'm sure since I know almost nothing about this stuff to begin with. :D

Heh heh - I do this stuff for a living, and it'd be a several-month project if I had to do it in my spare time :D

The SS concept car has paddle shift on the 4L65E. Believe it was in motor trend a few months back. Did not really get in depth on it but it is a feature on the car that is the same basic setup as ours.

Yank at one point made a box that does pretty much what Eric described above - they called it the "Tranny Tricker" - it plugged into the tranny @ the tranny harness connection, and the harness from the pcm plugged into it. It allowed normal passthrough operation or manually activated shifting (pushbutton).


Chris

Does anybody have any information on that product? Is it still available?