MGW GT350 shifter - second run

[JN66]

Ordered the upgrade piece. Will be getting the whole thing installed as soon as it arrives. Just in time for track season. Very exciting. This shifter is beautiful for those of you who haven't seen it in person.

Sponsored

 

[Epiphany]

I have a question that pertains to the feel, does the MGW unit increase or decrease the effort required to move the shifter from gate to gate?

Is it still slightly notchy like the OEM setup, or does glide smoothly into gear?

I'm interested in George's perspective on this as he has a heck of a lot of experience in this regard.

I would say there is a slight increase in effort when moving from gate to gate. Slight.

The Bic pen spring that Ford uses with their plastic collar/piece of foam jammed in allows for very light reverse action compared to the nitrided steel pin of the MGW. Then again, the MGW doesn't fail or lock you out of gear.

I look at it this way. I am very comfortable with my car having the MGW shifter. I'm used to it. I expect the level of effort it requires to manipulate and it pays me back in droves. It, in some respects, makes the car for me. Going back to the stock shifter is something I would never do.

Example - George and I attended the Track Attack together. I distinctly recall jumping into the car assigned to me, buckling up my harness, and then grabbing the shifter. George was standing nearby. He laughed when I made a sour face and commented at how bad the factory shifter was. As poor as they are new it was even worse given the abuse it had imparted upon it.

Ordered the upgrade piece. Will be getting the whole thing installed as soon as it arrives. Just in time for track season. Very exciting. This shifter is beautiful for those of you who haven't seen it in person.

Looking forward to your review.

 

[morjo02]

any group buys for the new MGW Shifter ??

 

[TONYG]

Guys, please excuse me here. Let's assume that I just walked into this conversation.
Why should I buy this shifter?
Is it easier to find each gear
when speed shifting?
What can one expect to pay for the shifter itself?

 

[SlowArrow]

Guys, please excuse me here. Let's assume that I just walked into this conversation.
Why should I buy this shifter?
Is it easier to find each gear
when speed shifting?
What can one expect to pay for the shifter itself?

The stock shifter is not really bad, but I would call it soft. The mechanism pivots on a nylon type ball and sleeve, and the multi piece linkage snakes around with rubber isolator that add more compliance. Grab the shifer when it is in gear and how much you move it around. That is the soft I refer to. My guess is that will continue to get worse as the nylon pivot wears. The MGW is MUCH improved. The throw of the shifter has been reduced, and it feels solid - very little sloppy motion, if any. A narrow gate makes shifting feel like a straight throw back and forth, very clean, very precise. Is it easier to find each gear- there is nothing to "find", just shift. Shifting if faster and more precise.....no question in my mind.

Do you need to make the change - clearly no. Will you see a real difference - only you can judge that. I know I did, and would never go back. Check with MGW on the price.....they offer a forum discount I believe.

 

[try714]

The stock shifter is not really bad, but I would call it soft. The mechanism pivots on a nylon type ball and sleeve, and the multi piece linkage snakes around with rubber isolator that add more compliance. Grab the shifer when it is in gear and how much you move it around. That is the soft I refer to. My guess is that will continue to get worse as the nylon pivot wears. The MGW is MUCH improved. The throw of the shifter has been reduced, and it feels solid - very little sloppy motion, if any. A narrow gate makes shifting feel like a straight throw back and forth, very clean, very precise. Is it easier to find each gear- there is nothing to "find", just shift. Shifting if faster and more precise.....no question in my mind.

Do you need to make the change - clearly no. Will you see a real difference - only you can judge that. I know I did, and would never go back. Check with MGW on the price.....they offer a forum discount I believe.

If they do I'm in for one..

 

[SlowArrow]

I got a chance to drive the 350 today between the storms, and focused a lot on vibration through the shifter. I have a Gen 1 MGW installed. I looked for any sign of vibration that would cause me to order the "upgrade" kit. Funny thing was - there was zero vibration at any RPM, the parking vibrated much more than the shifter.

So I was wondering, why would 1 in 10 shifters vibrate as badly was reported? It makes me wonder if there isn't some other issue with those cars. Could the drivetrain dampers or vibration isolation system be shorted out somehow? Could there be something difference in the modal response of those drivetrains? The shifter doesn't cause the vibration, so why do the few vibrate? It's great that MGW could develop a fix - I'm just wondering why they had to, and does that mask another issue.

 

[TONYG]

Thank you sir, I'm interested.

"A narrow gate makes shifting feel like a straight throw back and forth, very clean, very precise. Is it easier to find each gear- there is nothing to "find", just shift. Shifting if faster and more precise.....no question in my mind."

 

[Trackaholic]

I got a chance to drive the 350 today between the storms, and focused a lot on vibration through the shifter. I have a Gen 1 MGW installed. I looked for any sign of vibration that would cause me to order the "upgrade" kit. Funny thing was - there was zero vibration at any RPM, the parking vibrated much more than the shifter.

So I was wondering, why would 1 in 10 shifters vibrate as badly was reported? It makes me wonder if there isn't some other issue with those cars. Could the drivetrain dampers or vibration isolation system be shorted out somehow? Could there be something difference in the modal response of those drivetrains? The shifter doesn't cause the vibration, so why do the few vibrate? It's great that MGW could develop a fix - I'm just wondering why they had to, and does that mask another issue.

My engine has a significant resonance @ ~1800 RPM that I did not notice as much in the Track Attack GT350 I drove. It is possible that some cars vibrate more than others, and maybe the initial shifter design was more susceptible to resonance. The second version may be less likely to vibrate in vehicles that already have higher vibrations than most.

-T

 

[SlowArrow]

My engine has a significant resonance @ ~1800 RPM that I did not notice as much in the Track Attack GT350 I drove. It is possible that some cars vibrate more than others, and maybe the initial shifter design was more susceptible to resonance. The second version may be less likely to vibrate in vehicles that already have higher vibrations than most.

-T

I'm sure MGW killed the issue with the isolation they added. I was just wondering why some car vibrate and some don't. What drives that, and it there a way (or reason) to fix the vibration at the source.

 

[JN66]

It's funny. I've had 2 GT350s now (this one being an R).

And they both vibrate; however, my first one was significantly worse. The vibration was so loud that it made having a conversation difficult at higher RPMs (not that one wants to talk while driving these animals).

I am curious the difference once I switch to my MGW. Should be a few weeks and I'll report back. I suspect it'll be much improved (can't be worse)

 

[xXANCHORMONXx]

I am one of the few who called George about nvh issues.

Essentially at about 4-6k ish there would be heavy vibration with the shifter which would go away as I revved higher.

This wasn't present with the oem shifter. I did remove the shifter and made sure that there was no binding.

I'm very excited about this.

Looks to me that the only difference after upgrading the first gen shifter is that the shifter box won't have that lighting cut in it for weight savings?

Otherwise I do love this shifter!

 

[Draughn]

Sorry if this has been posted, but what is a good price to have this installed? Should I find a specialty shop to do it?

Thanks!

*Im in the Seattle area or I'd try to sweet talk George into helping.

 

[Epiphany]

So I was wondering, why would 1 in 10 shifters vibrate as badly was reported? It makes me wonder if there isn't some other issue with those cars. Could the drivetrain dampers or vibration isolation system be shorted out somehow? Could there be something difference in the modal response of those drivetrains? The shifter doesn't cause the vibration, so why do the few vibrate? It's great that MGW could develop a fix - I'm just wondering why they had to, and does that mask another issue.

My engine has a significant resonance @ ~1800 RPM that I did not notice as much in the Track Attack GT350 I drove. It is possible that some cars vibrate more than others, and maybe the initial shifter design was more susceptible to resonance. The second version may be less likely to vibrate in vehicles that already have higher vibrations than most.

-T

I'm sure MGW killed the issue with the isolation they added. I was just wondering why some car vibrate and some don't. What drives that, and it there a way (or reason) to fix the vibration at the source.

Note that Ford revised their own TR3160 design in an attempt to mitigate NVH complaints. I hate to use the polishing a turd analogy but in essence the factory shifter stills suffers NVH issues in certain cars.

This is a great conversation and I enjoy the exchange of ideas along with hearing different points of view. Excessive NVH can ruin an otherwise great driving experience. How a given car can deviate in terms of vibration from another that went through the same manufacturing/assembly process can be a bit of a mystery. George has suggested exploring driveline alignment in the past and I believe his thought process definitely has merit.

It would be great if we could assume that all of the driveline components are within factory specification (and that the design that drove those specs is proper) on each and every car. I'm not convinced that they always are or that extreme care is given in terms of dirveline alignment on the assembly line.

I do have a bit of experience with respect to certain SVT transmission variants in a number of ways. Most recently the GT350's TR3160 and the TR6060 from the GT500. In the case of the TR3160, starting with the transmission crossmember in the GT350. I dimensioned one so that I could better study it in CAD (and along with it, the mount).

It is a very lightweight piece. For an aluminum casting is is very rigid. Note that the holes at the outer ends of the crossmember are slotted.

Those slots allow for a fair amount of lateral "adjustment" such that the tail of the transmission can be moved one way or the other. The engine at the front mounts fits over studs and the mounts themselves sit in/on the factory K-member (which has room to move when fastening as well). There are a couple of potential issues here. First, the engine/transmission can be positioned such that there is undue lateral pressure on the rear shifter mount that attaches to the floorpan. The issue is that the two guidepins can preload the rubber mount. This compresses one side of the mount and unloads the other. This can or could cause additional vibration to pass through and into the cabin.

The other issue is that the transmission needs to be in a neutral position (not gear but rather the case itself) when tightened to the floorpan. If there is excess lateral pressure you are once again preloading the mount. This can happen when you use a floorjack (which usually swings in a radius) to raise the transmission/crossmember up such that you can install the bolts and tighten them up. Much of the driveline weight is carried by a very small area. The molded rubber just above the studs in the following photo carries everything that isn't also shared with the front engine mount.

You then have weight Ford found necessary to help quell the raging harmonics generated by the Voodoo engine.

You'll never see (I know I never have) Ford comment publicly on the specifics regarding how they addressed vibration on the GT350. It has been mention in passing (and quite passively at that) but never directly and with detail. That said, the GT350 has almost 13lbs of weight added to the rear of the transmission that isn't used on any other Mustang engine/transmission combination. This is significant in and of itself in the context of all the weight reduction that Ford did with this car (CF, aluminum, etc) and shows how critical and necessary it is for this application.

If your car was outside the range in terms of driveline vibration/frequency then the above added-on weights won't be able to minimize or eliminate in-cabin NVH. The weights are designed to work in a certain range and in most cases do a pretty good job.


Something else. I think most everyone had hoped to see a CF shaft in this car, myself included. It seemed a natural. Especially given what we were told about how necessary it was for the '13/'14 GT500 in order for it to be able to break the 200mph threshold. Ultimately, we were told that Ford couldn't get the stiffness necessary from a CF shaft in the case of the GT350. I've struggled with that but defer to the engineers that made those comments publicly. Ford did test CF shafts in the GT350, evidenced by pre-production prototype undercar photos. One thing is for certain, there were issues at the tail end of the transmission beyond just the weights needing to be added.

Length.

Steve Turner paid a visit to Tremec's headquarters in Michigan on behalf of SVT performance (dotcom). The visit had to do with a writeup on the upcoming TR3160 transmission. On the table before him lay a couple of well tested test units that were disassembled. I studied the photos in Steve's writeup very carefully and something stuck out immediately. I noticed one photo of Nate Tovey of Tremec holding a fixed flange next to a cup-style flange that was installed on one of the transmissions. Note the depth of the nut in each case...

In talking with Steve I learned that Ford was seeing a "wag the dog" type of effect and that the solution was shorten the flange as much as possible. That meant no cup. Without a cup, no CV joint, hence the U-joint used on the front of the GT350.

Enter the TR6060. I worked on a solution that allowed physically bolting on a '13/'14 CF shaft to the prior year GT500's ('07-'12). This is why I noticed what was going on with the TR3160, immediately. I believe Ford engineers had originally used the cup flange from the '13/'14 on the TR3160 during development. In the following photo the CF shaft-ready flange is on the right and the earlier, U-joint only flange, on the left.

Some CAD design was done followed by machine work.

I sold a good number to GT500 owners. What I learned was how sensitive a given driveline can be. The CF shaft proved to really quiet things up. But most importantly and relevant here was how the TR6060/5.4 or 5.8 was nowhere as near as sensitive in terms of transmission length as the the TR3160. While cost may have indeed been a factor, the fact that Ford had to forego a CF shaft due to the vibrational characteristics in the GT350 is remarkable.

That said, don't ever remove the weights. They absolutely serve a purpose. And be very wary of any bracket, shifter, etc, that attaches to the area of the weights (think shifter, shifter support bracket, etc). There is a reason why MGW uses the stock rear shifter mount or bushing - because it works. The durometer and shape/design work very well and an aftermarket mount would just be an unnecessary expense that most likely wouldn't outperform what the factory came up with.

Sorry if that was a bit long winded but this has been my experience.

It's funny. I've had 2 GT350s now (this one being an R).

And they both vibrate; however, my first one was significantly worse. The vibration was so loud that it made having a conversation difficult at higher RPMs (not that one wants to talk while driving these animals).

I am curious the difference once I switch to my MGW. Should be a few weeks and I'll report back. I suspect it'll be much improved (can't be worse)

Given you've witnessed what sounds like excessive NVH characteristics with two GT350's now I am really looking forward to your experience with the MGW unit.

 

[Bob Loblah]

Epiphany, I have the cabin vibration that is also felt through the seats. Is it possible, and likely to help, to adjust the position of the tail of the transmission via the slots in the cross member to reduce this vibration? When I have my upgraded kit installed I can have my shop give this a try.

Sponsored