400RWHP

Hey gang,
I wanted to start this up and see what info we can gather here.

Our transmissions (should I say software) are horrible. Now let me start by saying I know just enough to be a hazard which is why I wanted to have a discussion here.

I have the EC TCU/ECU tunes and love them, they are great products and made a huge difference. But a friend just got an SRT8 300 recently and went ahead with the Diablo tuner. He has the ability to not only tune the ECU but TCU as well. He set it up for a mildly aggressive shift under part throttle but more ferocious under heavy acceleration. My GOD this thing shifts nice, it's crisp under normal driving, no stutter, no hesitation, just a firm C class type shift. When he gets into it though it will bark tires into 2nd and 3rd. The car feels so good.

Ok so now my question. Why, after 10 years, can we not have a transmission solution like this? I'm not being harsh, I'm asking

Is it a software issues, hardware issue? The transmissions are the same right? Or am I incorrect? Please let me know what is up with this. I LOVE my car but I hate the way it shifts. I would be willing to do almost anything to get it to shift the way his does and I don't think I'm alone on this. Could we get enough people to ante up and make it attractive enough to a vendor here to really finally fix this issue? Or is it insurmountable?

Sorry such a long read but I just want to find out what is truly the issue.

Regards

shardul

iTrader: (1)

Some companies find it very hard to allocate R&D dollars to a limited demand AMG market.
Can it be done? Yes
Will someone invest time/money and develop a product? Probably not

I think a fellow member started on a TCU project but didnot get to finish it due to personal reasons.

whipplem104

It is easy to make one shift like a brick. But most Mercedes customers do not want this. You can do it either mechanically or with the tuning. I do standalone tcus for the 722.6 and the great thing is you can have what ever you want.

GregMB

I believe it was MBWorld member Shifter that was working on this project with a friend of his (programmable shifting, etc). The friend lost interest (or moved or something) and the project faded away....

Then Jerry (or Jake) at EuroCharged made some cryptic post about the project still being alive. I'm not sure if that meant that they took over the existing project, or if they had been working on their own version of that same initiative... but that was several months ago and I haven't seen anything posted about it since.

-G

400RWHP

Ok so it sounds like it is possible on these transmissions. What would it take programming wise that is so different from the SRT transmissions? I would be willing to kick in R&D funds if we get this solved. Anyone else have interest in furthering this project?

loungn14

we got the product to take a look at and its currently on my car. The problem however is the original designer of the coding is no longer on the project and the coding is pretty bad and cryptic to decode.

we just started doing the jeep/Chrysler transmissions and have been ramping up pretty quick on it. We sponsor a few of their sites and have been finishing up R&D on custom tuning for their mods/platform.

urbamworm

Yeah, I was hoping for more aggressive shifting and was a little disappointed too. I got a modded valve body from Paramount Performance who does SRT stuff (which like you said will chirp the tires on shifts when on it hard) but mine while having an improvement was no where near a "hard" shift and left a desire for more. I later added a tcu with Eurocharged tcu tune and didn't really notice much difference with the two things combined, I guess since I already had pretty much what you would get from a tcu tune from the mechanical upgrade of the modded valve body. It almost felt like there was more of a hesitation between shifts after the tcu tune like the throttle would close and the engine gets quieter then releases the power again where it just keeps roaring through the shifts before the tcu tune.

You can tell in the video showing comparisons of the sound difference but I am not sure if it is slower, faster or the same as for shift time. Transmissions are kind of disappointing in shifts in these cars.

whipplem104

There is torque management during the shifts. A lot of the Chrysler guys turn this off in their tunes. It is in the ecu though. I am doing testing in a 2008 charger that did it with my tcu and the factory tcu removed. I had no indication that the transmission was shifting on the CAN bus and it still had tq reduction. The problem with turning it off though in a stock transmission is that the 3-4 shift will most likely flare. The transmission has to be set up very well and have complete control over the pressures up to a certain power level around 500hp it can be done but like in the mopar when we turned the nitrous on it flares. The 3-4 shift is a clutch to clutch shift and it decouples momentarily during the shift.

400RWHP

Your description hit it right on the head. My car sounds/acts exactly the same. I am going to see about getting a vid from my buddy with his car doing its thing. There has to be a way and it seems from responses here, a need. So love you guys at EC and others, but here we have some interest and at least some cash being offered to R & D, let's make this happen.

Shifter

I have spent a lot of time working on the project. It is entirely possible. I posted vids of my car chirping tires at part throttle-- just to show the firmness and what is possible. Unfortunate it got derailed a little. I then contacted EC to see if we could finish it up. My bro has a charger srt-8 and has the predator diablo tuner. He can also chirp second and made that trans so much better to drive. Really I wish a large company like them would take it on to make a handheld device.

Max.H

This is one of the very reasons why are cars can run so fast in the 1/4. Because the tranny give just the right amount of slip so we can get traction and still accelerate hard. I would NOT want BMW M5 or M3 style shifts that will break the tires loose and lose traction thus causing slower times.

I hear what you're saying. but, I would not want to mess with that. Instead maybe upgrading the friction discs or whatever it's called to hold more power. If you are at those levels. I think the trans in the E55 are awesome and love it. Buttery smooth with just enough bite and slip to keep a strong surge of acceleration. Just my 2 cents.

400RWHP

Yeah man I hear ya, I would love a user tunable solution like that as well, but honestly I would more than settle for just this thing not shifting like it's made of play-doh. All the power in the world and then it shifts and I feel like the dog on the Foghorn Leghorn cartoons, with his *** up in the air getting spanked by a kack with a 2x4.

400RWHP

Reviving this one gang. I just had a brand new trans put in the car, sent TCU back to EC and the shifts are nicer but still not what I'm looking for. I don't need tire barking at part throttle but I want this thing to shift faster/crisper.

Here is my question to the members of this forum:
Are you guys willing to put in R&D dollars so this issue can make enough sense that a tuner would want to take this project on?
I'm willing to toss in $500-$1000 on my own, even offer up my car for testing. Would Anyone else be interested? I mean if we had 10 guys let's say, that want this sorted out, that is $5,000-$10,000 for R&D (of course we get tunes included in that ) for someone to take this on.
Asking who else would be in? Who would join me on this list to finally get a solution for this TCU/trans combo? There are a ton of cars that would benefit, not just W211s, MB used this transmission in a lot of cars. If there is no interest I will leave this alone, but from all the guys I see on the forum talking about slow/sloppy/slushy shifting, I can't believe there would be no interest. I'm in, join me.
1. 400RWHP

Style_Front

I think I would just send my valve body to John at IPT performance. He can adjust the shift firmness through the valve body. The answer I think you're looking for would be most complete with valve body modification, tcu tuning and removal of Tq management from through the ECU, however of those three things I think only two are available and one has mixed reviews. The valve body adjustment will allow the original programming to do its thing yet firm it all up across the board. I think it's the simplest, cost effective solution albeit a bit incomplete. Perhaps if EC could simply remove TM then coupled with VB adjustments your be mostly there.