MSE Shifter Is For Me

[TroyG]

I just wanted to share with everyone my new toy. I looked and read alot about the main 2 shifters on the market and decided to go with the MSE for 1 reason only. I am not a tranny guy and all I needed to do with the MSE is change the nose cone. I had spoke with jeff regarding his shifter and it looks great but I am not a tranny guy so I had to go with one I could handle myself. ( Thanks for your help Jeff, You and Bill at MSE were a big help in this project )


I got my new MSE Vertigate shifter installed this past week end and just love the way it works. It took about 12 hours to install because, after removing the old shifter setup I had to:
Install a new brace under the car to mount the shifter to.
Mount the shifter.
Becuase the new shifter mounts about 6 inched to the right of the old one I had to move my 6al, 2 step, retard module & nitrous bottle. After moving the electronic over, they then were in the way of the nitrous bottle so it had to be moved foward, and yes after moving the bottle foward it was hitting the fire bottle so it got moved as well.

So finally the inside was done.

Nose cone time.
The motor and tranny had to be moved UP 1 1/2 inches in order for the new nose cone to clear the torsion housing. So out comes the motor and tranny. Well by moving the motor up, all my fuel system had to be remounted including the coil.

Last but not least cut, tap and install the shift rods. ( Walk in the park after everything else )

Adjustment was very simple, put all the gears in neutral, put the shifter in neutral, adjust the rods were they had just a little play in them and BANG it's done.

Started at 6am Sat morning and finished at 5:30pm. Loaded it in the trailer and off to the track.
Made 4 passes and NO PROBLEMS with the shifter. All 4 passes were ok, but I did find that after moving the motor and tranny up the 1 1/2 inches the car reacts totally differant. Other than that I am very happy with the MSE setup.

I read somewere, someone said you will NEVER miss another gear after installing the MSE shifter and man were they right. Worth ever dollor I paid for the setup. ( $1000.00 )

[The Inspector]

     
      The V-Gate shifter is the $hit!!!
I Dig the one I have installed in my car. 

[akabuzz]

I have 1 in each of my vw's, Ill never go back to "H"

[Muffler Mike]

Mine is not MSE (JCL) but damn they are sooooo nice.
to miss a shift is to miss the timing on the clutch pedal or pull a rod out of the fork. (Pin it)

[NoBars]

Just out of curiosity, How do these work on the street?

[byoung]

They don't. Unless you never have to downshift!   

[silverbugget]

sweet. Yeah I love mine too.
One little tip or what happened to me once.
I pulled into the waterbox to do my burnout in third gear , when I was done I went to put it back into 1st. It would not go up into first or second. Crap.. I ran the race in 3rd and 4th and still did ok. I thought for sure I had a tranny issue. Come to find out I had bumped my reverse handle and it was slightly engaged. I put the vertigate in neutral and engaged the reverse handle and then took it out and the vertigate went right into 1st and 2nd.
Just thought I would share. It was a pisser when it hppened but I was sure glad that was only problem.
Good luck and smooth shifting.

[akabuzz]

They work great on street drivin cars, I downshift all day long.

[Pat Downs]

Like MM says, pin your shift forks. They can be pretty hard on dog rings also.

[Brian Watts]

They work great on street drivin cars, I downshift all day long.

REALLY   

[bedjo78]

Like MM says, pin your shift forks. They can be pretty hard on dog rings also.

I am on the way installing MSE on my car. a bit confuge with Pin the shift fork. How you guys doing that?

[Ohio Tom (DdK)]

LOL... "Drivers" are hard on dog rings,.... not so much the shifter...LOL....


Pinning the shift forks means that you drill a 1/16" hole thru the shift fork and shift rod as one drilling. You then can drive in a roll pin that locks the shift fork to the rod. This way you are not relying on the clamping force only.
It also means that you cannot adjust the shift fork any more unless you replace the shift rod and re-drill. So, it had better  be adjusted right.
I have seen un-pinned shift forks slip before in race boxes, but only when the driver didn't have his clutch right or made some kind of other mistake that explained it.
If you have them pinned, then the hocky stick becomes the next weak link.
Thus the MSE shifter elimiates the hockey stick.
Very nice setup for sure.

So, IMO it's not a bad thing to do if you miss shifts or have other issues. However, most of the time I only do it based on special request.

Also, a little tip: I over torque the clamping bolt on both shift forks by ALOT.
No sure how much I end up with, but I hit my wrench with a 1/2lb ball peen hammer until it stops tighening. Probablay 60ftlbs. That holds them pretty good too.

[bedjo78]

Tom, that's mean need to remove the shift fork from  the box ? or it can be done with shift fok installed?

[Ohio Tom (DdK)]

Yeah, you gotta take it down.