Wevo, Rennshift, Seine... OEM the ultimate shifter?

[redridge]

I know there have been plenty of threads on these shifters and everyone has their favorites but I have a question/opinions regarding the gated aspect of these shifters. I have the seine shifter for over 10 years and while it does shift the 915 accurately, I do find it too mechanical as far as the 1-2 gate is concerned. When you shift into first and into/downshift 2nd, sometimes you hit these gates and it can impede in the flow of shifting (it doesnt have that cutting corners/rounded feel).. I think the springs in combination with these gates make shifting clunky. So, I removed the gates and to my surprise, the shifter sprung back into the 3-4-N plane regardless if you were in 1st or 2nd gear. So if I was in 2nd gear and the shifter is now in the 3-4-N plane, how do I shift? Do I bring back the shifter to the 2nd gear position hold it there and then shift to 3rd? Does the Wevo or Rennshift does this as well? If they do, by removing the gates on the Seine, did I just create a Wevo and or a Rennshift? The benefit of the gates is of course keeps the shifter in the 1st or 2nd gear position… I read that keeping the shifter in the gear positions is good for the tranny. I know the Wevo has a gate option that creates the “H” pattern, but does it still spring back to the 3-4-N plane once you are in 1st or 2nd gear. Or does the shifter stay in that gear position. As for Rennshift, I don’t think it is gated or has the option, correct me if Im wrong.

I think to answer these questions is to understand the philosophy of the 915 transmission. Why the 1st/2nd gear was not originally gated but not the 5/R were and why was there no reference/spring back to neutral position from 1st/2nd but exist with 5/R (BTW because of the 5/R gates, I find shifting from 4th to 5th is also kinda clunky, but I am hardly in 5th). Its been so long how my original 915 shifter worked… but I think the original shifter was slide left and into 1st and the shifter stayed there (that’s a good thing). Same as 2nd, the shifter stayed there and so you know where you were… You just need that muscle memory of where 3rd and 4th is located. Maybe because of how the 915 tranny was designed Porsche got it right with the original 915 shifter and it is truly for the “purist”. Should I just put the gates back on the Seine and call it a day and live with the it? I may have to revisit the original 915 shifter and just drive more...

[winders]

The 915 was never “gated” in stock form. It does have a spring mechanism to help prevent selecting 5th/reverse inadvertently.

Most of the aftermarket 915 shifters add a spring mechanism to push the shifter away from the 1st/2nd plane and center the shifter in the 3rd/4th plane. They are not “gated” in the traditional sense of the word.

Wevo sells an internal “GateShift” kit that introduces a gated shift setup, much like the G50, to the 915.

The impetus for these aftermarket shifters is to provide a way too help prevent dangerous misshifts when driving the car hard.

I use the Rennshift and love it. I recently increased the rate of the spring pushing the shifter away from the 1st/2nd plane because I had made a couple of 2nd to 1st shifts when I intended to do a 2nd to 3rd shift.

I have never used a Seine shifter setup. It seems a bit kludgy to me.

[Classic 911]

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[73pcar]

Fresh rebuild of my 915 along with installing a Rennshift and Stromski coupler were transformative. Highly recommend the Rennshift.

[Uwon]

Wevo GateShift



Plus Karsten17 915 shifter spring



Plus OEM short shift



Superb!!!
Cheers,
Johan
[

[Schulisco]

I have the Seine Systems Gate Shift Kit installed on my 915 and I absolutely love it!
But - this is not only thing changing the game!
I also had to overhaule the bushings on the whole shift linkage including the shift coupler in the rear! My car already had the Porsche short shift kit. It works very well together with the GSK. Not to forget a proper adjustment which is required while driving around and adjust several times until the perfect adjustment has been found. I carried two wrenches within the car to adjust it from time to time...
I find it much more easy to handle/shift now, now more comparable to my other cars whose gear shift levers also tend to go in the 3./4. alley automatically.

But - and I cannot emphasisze this enough - the right gear oil is on a 915 the by far most important "component" affecting the shifting and handling comfort! Because most of the people fill in these gearboxes modern oils with lower viscosity than Porsche originally specfied! POrsche specified for the 915s an old SAE90 GL5 oil.
If the viscosity is lower than this, e.g. 75W90 and a probably also a modern (partially-)synthtetic oil, then the required drag torque of the 915 is not available and therefore the synchros of it cannot do it's job. And this also heavily affects the shifting comfort as well as well finding the gears...far more than expected!
My recommendation is, if you do not know for sure what kind of gear oil is in yours, refill the 915 with a mostly mineral old school gear oil of SAE90 GL5 and test it again. See this video, he uses a Swepco 201, it's available in SAE90 and SAE80W90, both the SAE90 meets the specs of the Porsche recommended Shell Spirax MB90 (don't know if this available in the US, here in Germany only in unhandy and too large 20l barrels):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOV0_bt1xRY

Edit: It has to be an API GL5 oil for the 915! Don't know if AGMA 4EP of the Swepco 80W90 meets this....

Happy X-Mas!

Thomas

[redridge]

Originally Posted by winders

The 915 was never “gated” in stock form. It does have a spring mechanism to help prevent selecting 5th/reverse inadvertently.

I use the Rennshift and love it. I recently increased the rate of the spring pushing the shifter away from the 1st/2nd plane because I had made a couple of 2nd to 1st shifts when I intended to do a 2nd to 3rd shift.

I have never used a Seine shifter setup. It seems a bit kludgy to me.

Originally Posted by 73pcar

Fresh rebuild of my 915 along with installing a Rennshift and Stromski coupler were transformative. Highly recommend the Rennshift.

winders, 73pcar: when you shift from first to 2nd gear, does the shifter spring back into the 3-4-N plane or does the shifter stay in the 2nd gear? Rennshift was my next shifter, but when I removed the gates on the Seine... I was thinking maybe this is how the Rennshift or Wevo acts.

Originally Posted by Uwon

Wevo GateShift

Plus Karsten17 915 shifter spring

Plus OEM short shift

Superb!!!
Cheers,
Johan
[

Uwon: can you tell me more about this mod? So it retains the stock 915 shifter and the spring and gates are local to the tranny... this sounds like a nice setup (essentially a g50?). Where does the Karsten17 spring mount? Does this modernized the 915 as far as the guessing of where to put the shifter? Thanks for the feedback

Originally Posted by Schulisco

I have the Seine Systems Gate Shift Kit installed on my 915 and I absolutely love it!
But - this is not only thing changing the game!
I also had to overhaule the bushings on the whole shift linkage including the shift coupler in the rear! My car already had the Porsche short shift kit.

But - and I cannot emphasisze this enough - the right gear oil is on a 915 the by far most important "component" affecting the shifting and handling comfort! If the viscosity is lower than this, e.g. 75W90 and a probably also a modern (partially-)synthtetic oil, then the required drag torque of the 915 is not available and therefore the synchros of it cannot do it's job. And this also heavily affects the shifting comfort as well as well finding the gears...far more than expected!
My recommendation is, if you do not know for sure what kind of gear oil is in yours, refill the 915 with a mostly mineral old school gear oil of SAE90 GL5 and test it again. See this video, he uses a Swepco 201, it's available in SAE90 and SAE80W90, both the SAE90 meets the specs of the Porsche recommended Shell Spirax MB90 (don't know if this available in the US, here in Germany only in unhandy and too large 20l barrels):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOV0_bt1xRY

Edit: It has to be an API GL5 oil for the 915! Don't know if AGMA 4EP of the Swepco 80W90 meets this....

Happy X-Mas!

Thomas

I agree with you on the Seine, I did love at first, very precise... ten years later, still precise but clunky and not very organic (if that makes sense)... sometimes it feels good, but when the wing on the shifter is resting on the gates, that small distance going to the next gear is just not that smooth. Maybe the gates need some teflon coating or something... but that metal on metal and with the spring pressure on it, just now irks me... and yes all the bushings are all new. There is absolutely no slop, the slightest touch, the coupler responds to it. Agree on calibration of the coupler. Im surprised that even a 16th movement makes a big diff.

As far as oil, I did change my oil before I started ranting about the shifter... but I remember way back that all the rave was about Wolf’s Head GL-5 80w-90. But, Im a swepco fan boy, that’s what I use in the engine and tranny.

[winders]

Originally Posted by redridge

winders, 73pcar: when you shift from first to 2nd gear, does the shifter spring back into the 3-4-N plane or does the shifter stay in the 2nd gear? Rennshift was my next shifter, but when I removed the gates on the Seine... I was thinking maybe this is how the Rennshift or Wevo acts.

When in 1st or 2nd, the spring tries to push the shift lever into the 3rd/4th plane but cannot because the transmission is in gear.

[redridge]

Originally Posted by winders

When in 1st or 2nd, the spring tries to push the shift lever into the 3rd/4th plane but cannot because the transmission is in gear.

this sounds like its gated... might have to look into this shifter. Thank You.

[winders]

Originally Posted by redridge

this sounds like its gated... might have to look into this shifter. Thank You.

It’s NOT gated……

[redridge]

now Im confused, Then I need to find out why my Seine springs back to 3-4 plane when in gear (with the gates removed). Im wondering if the engine has to be on, Im shifting the seine with the engine off.

Is it possible for you to check your shifter to put in 1st or 2nd (engine off)... does it stay in gear?

[Walt Fricke]

I assume the "gate" first mentioned here is the pair of vertical tabs on the piece the Seine design has you install on top of the shift tower, along with the hook you weld to the shift lever (after positioning it with hose clips)?

There is just one reason for this stuff, and it is to prevent the pressure from the Seine spring from traveling all the way back inside the transmission, where it causes the ball end of the dongle to press against the shift fork engagement slot, which in turn causes an axial pressure on the slot in the engagement sleeve/slider. I don't know just how much extra wear this causes back there. Perhaps not much, perhaps enough to worry about. But with spring pressure being arrested that way you get an extra whine.

This has something to do with why Porsche had two ears over on the right side of the tower, with a hook. Otherwise you'd have a whine in 5th. And on the highway you are in 5th a lot. Not having these tabs and hooks for 1/2 leaves you with a whine.

This is going to be true with any system which does what you really benefit from (spring loading in the 3/4 plane) but doesn't take dealing with the spring pressure while in 1/2. The original WEVO didn't account for this - Hayden thought it wasn't necessary. Maybe if you install the WEVO internal gate shift in the transmission, that is what deals with this pressure and avoids the whine?

I don't know how the other popular systems deal with this issue.

In any event, those tabs and hooks aren't normally called gates.

I've had a Seine in my SC for over 20 years, both in the car's street/track form, and its current dedicated track form, and the Seine has performed flawlessly. You should shift up, across, and up, etc, not fully diagonally, anyway. The internals of the transmission are designed that way. It is only because of slop (designed in, really, due to the width of the dongle ball, the shift fork engagement slots, and the general clearances in that part of the transmission) that you think and feel) you are shifting diagonally.

Were I to do it over again, I think I'd use the Karsten gizmo. Nice minimalist approach. But I would weld on ears and a hook, because I don't think it accounts for where the system resists the spring's pressure while you are in 1/2d gear.

Porsche eventually decided it should spring load its transmissions into the 3/4 plane. I don't work on my 07 turbo, so don't know what they did. How did they deal with the residual pressure issue? No whines in 1/2 or 5/6.

If your Seine feels like it springs back to the 3/4 plane when in 1st or 2d, I'd say one or more of your shift system bushings - either the ball cup up front, or the shift coupler in the rear - have excessive wear. Or you got so used to where the shift know was when you had these useful things in place that you are noticing the small movement. It isn't going to pop you out of gear, because it is the fore and aft motion of the lever which does that - engages and disengages a gear. The side to side motion only selects the gear plane to be engaged.

[rattlsnak]

WEVO all the way... ! (along with the PSJ)

[Uwon]

Uwon: can you tell me more about this mod? So it retains the stock 915 shifter and the spring and gates are local to the tranny... this sounds like a nice setup (essentially a g50?). Where does the Karsten17 spring mount? Does this modernized the 915 as far as the guessing of where to put the shifter? Thanks for the feedback

#2 is the actual GateShift. #3 is the dongle. Go to the Wevo web site for installation instructions and my build thread post #330 for installation quirks. Karsten17 is the gentleman’s user name on this board so just do a name search. The spring resides in the 915 shifter tower and keeps the shifter in the 3/4 plane when not in gear-just like in “modern” cars.
Hope this helps.
Johan

[Bill Verburg]

Don't know how well they work w/ a 915 but after driving a g50 car w/ CAE I'm sold

[911 SLANT]

Is this WEVO Gateshift kit totally installed threw bottom plate or does 915 transmission need to be dropped and split open?

[Tom '74 911]

I recently posted this response in another thread and thought I'd copy it here...

One more data point... My race car (SPEC 911) came to me with a Wevo shifter. I had been using a Seine Systems gate shift kit in my '74 911 (street/track) that I really liked, but was excited to try the Wevo, mostly due to the seemingly universal love that it gets. I found that I do not like the Wevo... at all. I did a lot of adjusting, spring swapping and even rebuilt the whole thing w/a bunch of new parts from Wevo but I could just not get along with it. I didn't like the feel and found it hard at times, to find gears. I finally gave up on the Wevo and bought a Rennshift for my race car... LOVE IT. I can't tell you what the mechanical differences are between the two, but the Rennshift just agrees with me - enough so that I bought a second one for my '74 to replace the Seine Systems kit.

This is all just one person's experience... I'm happy that there are so many options for us to chose from!

Best,
Tom

[Tom '74 911]

Photo for reference...

[Uwon]

Originally Posted by 911 SLANT

Is this WEVO Gateshift kit totally installed threw bottom plate or does 915 transmission need to be dropped and split open?

The full instructions are posted on the web site. I had my trans out already to fix a leak which made things simpler. I personally don’t think that I could have installed it in car- too fiddly.
Cheers,
Johan

[Walt Fricke]

To install the WEVO gate shift, you have to remove the stock dongle, and add the new one shown. The stock dongle is held on with a pivot pin and a cotter pin. When I had one of my 915s apart, I thought I'd remove the dongle, and took the cotter pin out. I couldn't budge the pivot pin, and I tried pretty hard, so I left well enough alone.

Never say never sometimes works if you are motivated enough. I removed the stub of a broken head stud without taking the heads and cylinders off once, as I was pressed for time - didn't want to miss the race that weekend. And by chance it was about the only one you could get at that way to weld something on to back the stub out.

So just maybe this could be done without taking the transmission apart - somehow. Even with doing it lying on your back under the car. I'm inclined to think that by the time you overcame all the obstacles you'd be time (and thus money) way ahead by taking the transmission apart and then reassembling.