What would happen if I combine normal shift kit and the SAW paddle shift kit? Like if I install both, would the response of gear changes be quicker than just having SAW kit? This might be a stupid question, but yeh not to familiar with how it works. Cheers
Its something like this, someone correct the wrong bits please A shift kit will speed up shifts by making physical changes to the valve body, the SAW kit looks after the electronic side of the shifting process. So together the shifts should be quicker than if either one is used. But they may be too quick using both giving you rough shifts so I would try just the SAW kit first.
Well I got another car now. If no one offers me a good deal for my zed, I was thinking of making it to a weekend car. But i don't wanna do a manual conversion coz I have to go over the pits etc. So was wondering how SAW and shift kit will work together? And it can also be my future reference as well. Even if I sold my zed now, I might get another Z when I settle down And pretty sure it can't be only me whos wondering the same thing?
hmmm.. what i thought is the SAW handles the electronic shift side of things meaning you have complete control of the changes and different settings/modes rather than just the computer changing through gears in D etc, and a valve body ugrade is whats making the box hardier and handle being shifted as its a mechanical upgrade rather than electronically upping line pressure?? my mate adams box that i may or may not end up with has 3k stall, upgraded valve body and manualized, so D doesnt do any thing anymore just another gear, its basically manual without a clucth, you drive it starting in 1st and go through the gears 2nd, D, O/D and same in reverse when slowing down,:rofl: ill forget sometimes to put it back in first to take off and it will stutter and want to stall like taking off in 3rd in a manual.. so im guessin you could run both and would be fine but id prob have the settings on the SAW adjusted.. My .02c i would run manualized valve body upgrade and stally.. i love the SAW and really want one but not sure how long it will last at 450+rwhp before it starts to eat itself lol without having beefed up the mechanical side of the box aswell
SAW is the brains and has two modes of operation The SAW kit is the brains and replaces the OEM gearbox controller and hence only deals with the control signals sent to the mechanical gearbox and lines that also go to the engine's ECU. The SAW kit has two modes of operation; automatic and manual. In manual mode you choose when to change gears and the SAW kit will only override your decision if you have 1st gear downshift protection enabled (i.e. you're going too fast to change down into 1st) or you don't have the gearbox conditions correct to change up into pseudo-5th gear. With automatic mode it looks at the throttle percentage and the speed and uses the configured shift map to know when the controller needs to tell the gearbox to change up or change down a gear. So the SAW Kit and the shift kit should be able to successfully interact, except for potential gear change shudder due to different line pressures over standard, so you would have to menu-tweak the setting for the SAW kit to smooth this out, my VH45 conversion originally had a horrible 1-2-3 gear change like someone was kicking you in the back ... solved now using 35% line pressure. Oh, when playing around with the automatic shift map the important thing to watch is the full throttle 1-2 gear up change speed because if this is too high then you will bounce the engine off the rev limiter before changing up a gear... and secondly DO NOT cross the lines as the factory maps in the OEM documentation has as this is very bad.
Wonder if the SAW kit would operate as a stand alone system with the appropriate rewiring eg if the OE ECU is replaced with an aftermarket ECU.
So be able to The SAW lines that also go to the engine's ECU (i.e. RPM, TPS - Throttle Position Sensor, Speed).
Yeh I'm wondering if the inputs like road speed, throttle position etc could be wired directly into the SAW control unit or if they have to be 'processed' through the OE engine ECU first.
A Queensland member had this. Had a modified valve body and then installed a SAW. The car was nearly un-drivable. The SAW can be reprogrammed to lower the duty on the line pressure to compensate though
The second point, 'DO NOT cross the lines', what do you mean by that? Oh and ess-racing say that the OE ECU may be bypassed completely, all their control unit needs are speed, RPM and throttle position inputs. So using an aftermarket ECU is OK.
Don't let the lines cross If you were to take the shift-map illustrated in the service manual - Section AT pages 31,32 and map these points into a spreadsheet you will get the lines as depicted in the picture below (which in this case is for the VH45 gearbox), where pseudo-5th (i.e. 4th lock-up) crosses the 4th and 3rd gear changes. Hence the SAW software could become confused which gear it should change into. Hence the map used by SAW should not have these gear change line crossovers and hence why in the following diagram where the pseudo-5th (i.e. 4th lock-up) is treated as an extra gear. Once you have got the shape of the curves right you then need to consider the ratio of your differential given that the TT and Q45 are geared for a higher top speed e.g. just over 190-200 km/hr compared to the V6-NA's 180 km/hr. Hence the maps need to be bought down to the desired top speed. At some point I created a modified spreadsheet wear I could put in a reduction percentage which lowered the entire map down. The next thing you have to worry about is 1st-2nd gear change speed under full throttle because if the speed is set too high then the engine will bounce against the 7000 rpm rev limiter before momentum carries the car across the target speed and then decides to change up a gear. For example with a V6-TT diff this is 69km/hr, for an V6-NA this is 61km/hr, for a Q45-VH45 this is 80km/hr, for a VH45 with V6-NA diff this is 51 km/h. The map I ended up using for my car were a hybrid of the V6-NA, V6-TT, and the Q45 curves. By trial and error on a nice, quite, long country road... I worked out the prefect map for my car. The biggest area of concern is the 0-100 km range for the 1-2, 2-3 up shifts... where the percentage-reduction spreadsheet comes in handy. I now have mine doing perfect 6500-7000 rpm full-throttle up-shift changes.
I have SAW and run a modded valve auto box it is drivable but it is difficult to get a smooth change 1-2-3 it slams 1-2 gear and 3rd not so hard into 4th. I can kick out the rear end going from 1-2 at WOT 5k revs. If I am at max acceleration and rev to 6k+ the changes are instant but not too slammy, no wheelspin and will out perform a manual any day. Passengers hate it but I love it. It is really set up best for WOT and flick through the gears at high RPM without lifting off. I have recently got the cable to run a laptop to the SAW and drop the line pressures a bit because I eventually wore the lining off the Belt and badly scored the drum with the rivets on the belt and had to replace both XXL$. I will post up the results when I get around to doing it.
I am just installing my SAW at the moment and see that you have two map options so you can set up for both "sport' and "comfort". The factory setting has both maps the same, so I guess you can play around with just one of the maps and be able to make an easy comparison by switching back and forth between the two to feel the difference. I note that Steven adjusted his line pressure to 35% to allow for his valve body mod.
yes two maps... line pressure yes you can have two maps and I think the overdrive button is to switch between this, though my earlier version of SAW does not have this hardware option. I had to adjust the line pressure due to the differences with the Q45 gearbox to the Z32 gearbox and not due to valve mods. But if you did do valve mods then the line pressure would be a way to try to smooth these out. Then I also used the line pressure to smooth out the gear changes on my old Z32-NA box.
So is there any point in modding the valve body if a SAW kit is going to be installed? Just wondering if there are some things that should be done to the valve body anyway eg instal an aftermarket accumulator, larger valves, etc.
