Unbiased opinion on Short Shifters

    I installed the Alpha short throw today.


    I'm happy with it, it took a few shifts to get used to it but everything feels good. I never had the ddm version but I'm sure that I wouldn't notice the difference

    Quote from Ice9812

    I installed the Alpha short throw today.


    I'm happy with it, it took a few shifts to get used to it but everything feels good. I never had the ddm version but I'm sure that I wouldn't notice the difference

    From stock anything would be better.

    ___________________________________
    #02828 January 2015 build date.
    Here to assist anyone in the Denver area.

    Quote from Dave@DDMWorks

    We have an Alpha short shifter that we will be installing later today and look forward to the comparison here. From what we can tell right now, the Alpha shifter positions the center of the pivot of the shifter a little further down than our shifter, this would make the shifting easier, but make the throw a longer. We will get some measurements later today and post it all up for everyone once we have the information and just post up measurements and other objective data.

    Might have to change the name on yours to "shorter" shifter

    I have the DDM shifter and honestly I didn't like it at first. It did make my shifts closer together. And that was great. But it did introduce a bit of stiffness. It finally went away and now I actually really like the shifter. It just takes some time to get used to.


    They offer a shifter handle that is made of stainless steel and weighs a good bit. It is supposed to make it shift like butter. Maybe DDM will send me one and let me try it out. :-) fingers crossed.

    Quote from rabtech

    I have the DDM shifter and honestly I didn't like it at first. It did make my shifts closer together. And that was great. But it did introduce a bit of stiffness. It finally went away and now I actually really like the shifter. It just takes some time to get used to.


    They offer a shifter handle that is made of stainless steel and weighs a good bit. It is supposed to make it shift like butter. Maybe DDM will send me one and let me try it out. :-) fingers crossed.

    I have that DDM heavy shifter ball, it looks great, not sure if it helped or not thou. I just like the looks of it.

    Quote from Dave@DDMWorks

    If yours is a little notchy, you might want to pull out the shifter and make sure the center plate that comes with our kit has the pins low instead of high. The plate on our kit has the pins offset and can be installed either way, up or down and work, but if the pins are offset up, it is really notchy. We fixed a couple at Maggie Valley and in the instructions made it a little more clear and also have stickers showing the correct direction on the newer kits, just something to check though.

    OK Dave, tried that it was right. Still the same notchy feel... Any other ideas?? If not I'm good with it, I really always thought it was normal until I heard about the other brand.

    Quote from TCB

    OK Dave, tried that it was right. Still the same notchy feel... Any other ideas?? If not I'm good with it, I really always thought it was normal until I heard about the other brand.

    I had the same stiff feeling with mine, last spring I took the boot and seal off and poured some Lucas Oil Additive down over the ball and pins. Replaced the seal and boot, took it for a spin, vastly smoothed out the shifting. I believe the shifter just needs a little more lubricant. Only did this once about 8,000 miles ago, but liked the results

    I know I said I would get this up yesterday, but we had a pallet load of supercharger kits that were shipping out yesterday and that took up a little more time than I thought it would, sorry about that.


    So, here is what we found -


    Here is the picture of what you receive with the Alpha short shifter kit -



    Here is a picture of the contents of the kit once removed from packaging -



    Here is an upclose picture of the contents of the Alpha kit (without the instructions in the picture)



    - Contents are -
    1 Aluminum spacer plate with steel pins
    1 rubber gasket
    1 shifter mechanism
    4 M6 bolts


    Here is a picture of the DDMWorks short shifter kit removed from the box -



    Here is a picture of the contents of the kit once removed from packaging -



    Here is an upclose picture of the contents of the DDMWorks kit (without the instructions in the picture)



    - Contents are -
    1 Steel spacer plate with steel pins
    1 Shift bushing spacer
    1 shifter mechanism
    4 M6 bolts



    Once we did get everything unpacked, we took a picture of all of the shifters next to each other. The stock shifter is on the bottom, the Alpha in the middle and the DDMworks on top.



    Now the important part, what is the stock shifter throw and what does each short shifter change it to. We put a dot on top of one of our stainless shift knobs to be able to see better the position of the top of the shifter relative to the dash, here is the stock shifter installed and in 3rd gear, aboutn 3.8125" away from the dash



    Then we shifted into 4th gear -



    The measurement goes to about 7.5", which means that the stock shifter throw is around 3.6875", which matches what we had measured a couple years ago when we first started making our kit, everything looks good.


    Next we installed the Alpha short shifter -



    The measurement was around 4.4375" in 3rd gear, then we shifted it into 4th gear -



    The measurement goes to around 6.9375", some quick math and the Alpha shift throw is right at 2.5"


    Next we installed our DDMWorks short shifter, here it is in 3rd gear -



    In 3rd gear we measure right at 4.375" and now in 4th gear -



    In 4th gear we measure 6.9375" also, so some quick simple math and our short throw is - 2.5625"


    There is a little slop in the shifting mechanism in the transmission and moving the shifter back and forth, we could have probably made the DDMWorks shifter shorter by .0625" also, but basically both short shifter kits end up with the same shift throw when installed. Since both short shifters are moving the shift mechanism the same distance on top and the bottom, the effort also has to be equal based on simple math again.


    The mechanics are pretty simple, Alpha short shifter has a slightly lower pivot and also a slightly lower mount for the actual shifter mount than the DDMworks mechanism, that is how the overall movement and distance stays the same with both kits.


    I will go a little more in depth of how both kits are installed in another post to show some substantial differences in design of the 2 kits, but we have another supercharger install coming in that we need to go do :)

    hmmm


    Would that be my Super Charger :thumbsup::thumbsup: There shop is AMAZING. :00008698:
    You were right @MACAWS.





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