MGW shifter one week review update 2012 and 2013 Boss

[06GT to 13LS]

Got my MGW, just need a car to put it in.

 

[ace72ace]

Got my MGW, just need a car to put it in.

I expect to be in the same boat next week, I ordered on 4/26. But no car 'til around August...

 

[emcrace]

The stock shifter is fine (except reverse) for around town. It hates to be rushed. For hard driving or rapid shifts it sucks. I have had the MGW in for a few days now and can say it makes a big difference. For quarter mile slamming it's terrific. It gives the trans the feel that a great German car has, snick, snick. It's like you can actually feel the engagement. Now the down side, trans whine is now heard ( not bad), and the springs for first second and fifth sixth are heavey handed. I am very pleased with the shifter and would buy it again. I just wish they had a road race spring option ( lighter).

 

[Dvendet]

The stock shifter is fine (except reverse) for around town. It hates to be rushed. For hard driving or rapid shifts it sucks. I have had the MGW in for a few days now and can say it makes a big difference. For quarter mile slamming it's terrific. It gives the trans the feel that a great German car has, snick, snick. It's like you can actually feel the engagement. Now the down side, trans whine is now heard ( not bad), and the springs for first second and fifth sixth are heavey handed. I am very pleased with the shifter and would buy it again. I just wish they had a road race spring option ( lighter).

I am still waiting for my ordered MGW shifter, it's been 4 weeks now. Guess I'll see next week some time. Should be picking up my Boss next week too. So I can't comment on the install yet, but from some people I spoke to suggested that you get the heat shield they offer (I think this is 25 dollars extra). This shield cuts down on road noise and heat. They also recommend using teflon tape on the shifter ball threads as this will cut down on the vibrations that are coming up through the trans. This should cut down on the noise.

Regarding the spring issue, your posts seems to suggest the shifter now appears to be stiffer than what was OEM. From watching the available instructional video, they install only one spring in the lower assembly that could possibly affect this. The video goes on to indicate that that this spring will lose about 10% of its stiffness by 500 miles. They recommend that if you would like to further reduce the shift stiffness, then remove "only" the lower cap of the return spring that you installed inside the lower shift assembly. So, time will tell.

MMD

 

[Justin]

the shifter when brand new is really stiff side to side. I have had it in for a few hundred miles now much better and smoother and not as stiff. feels great once broken in. and as for the gear whine. I but in the Redline MTL after the shifter made a huge decrease in the transmission noise.

 

[cf6mech]

Now the down side, trans whine is now heard ( not bad), and the springs for first second and fifth sixth are heavey handed.

Trans whine is a down side ? ........ Not for me !............. On another note,....when installing my MGW shifter I could not get over how crappy and Yugo-ish the stock shifter and lower box is, its bad enough that we have to deal with a remote shifter from Ford and the Chinese Getrag , but to install what Ford went with is ridiculous on a car like this. The MGW is a must have for any 5.0 or Boss owner. Huge difference in feel,engagement, everything !

 

[Justin]

Now the down side, trans whine is now heard ( not bad), and the springs for first second and fifth sixth are heavey handed.

Trans whine is a down side ? ........ Not for me !............. On another note,....when installing my MGW shifter I could not get over how crappy and Yugo-ish the stock shifter and lower box is, its bad enough that we have to deal with a remote shifter from Ford and the Chinese Getrag , but to install what Ford went with is ridiculous on a car like this. The MGW is a must have for any 5.0 or Boss owner. Huge difference in feel,engagement, everything !

+1 should be standard. Had I know I was going to get a boss and the wait for the shifter was 4-8 weeks I would have bought it months before I got the boss lol. I know some have done this.

 

[regalt87]

Although the assist spring could be binding it's not the only reason the clutch sticks. Here is why I say this. Ford put a substandard flywheel in the GT 500. They warped. The shaft on the transmission also had the wrong clearance and wrong lube. This caused the clutch to hang up and warp the flywheel which damaged the clutch and in turn damaged some syncro's. There is a TSB for this.

Now they contract with China to build a transmission (MT 82) China has many known quality control issues. It's just the way they do things there. Also Ford installs a shifter that has too much deflection with a rear mount that clearly allows the shifter to have even further deflection to the point that aligning up on the mechanisms to properly complete the gear selection is impaired. Then they put the wrong lube in the transmission.

No question those two examples are the result of either some or all of the following, poor design, engineering and lack of adequate testing required to make sure the product was OK.

When I think about the clutch pedal assembly. I wonder what could be happening to it at higher RPMs rather than lower RPMs. It shouldn't be different for higher RPMs. If the assist spring was causing the clutches to stick Ford would have released a TSB for removal of it. That would be an easy fix with a low cost associated with it. I believe they know now what the problem is and the cost is huge so they have made some changes to the current models and are holding there breath until ours are out of warranty. That's the way it works. There will be a fix however. The aftermarket is waiting to pounce on this as soon as our warranties are out and they can make some money on it. That's also the way that works.

 

[Tflong24]

Although the assist spring could be binding it's not the only reason the clutch sticks. Here is why I say this. Ford put a substandard flywheel in the GT 500. They warped. The shaft on the transmission also had the wrong clearance and wrong lube. This caused the clutch to hang up and warp the flywheel which damaged the clutch and in turn damaged some syncro's. There is a TSB for this.

Now they contract with China to build a transmission (MT 82) China has many known quality control issues. It's just the way they do things there. Also Ford installs a shifter that has too much deflection with a rear mount that clearly allows the shifter to have even further deflection to the point that aligning up on the mechanisms to properly complete the gear selection is impaired. Then they put the wrong lube in the transmission.

No question those two examples are the result of either some or all of the following, poor design, engineering and lack of adequate testing required to make sure the product was OK.

When I think about the clutch pedal assembly. I wonder what could be happening to it at higher RPMs rather than lower RPMs. It shouldn't be different for higher RPMs. If the assist spring was causing the clutches to stick Ford would have released a TSB for removal of it. That would be an easy fix with a low cost associated with it. I believe they know now what the problem is and the cost is huge so they have made some changes to the current models and are holding there breath until ours are out of warranty. That's the way it works. There will be a fix however. The aftermarket is waiting to pounce on this as soon as our warranties are out and they can make some money on it. That's also the way that works.

I have mentioned this before. I believe something was lacking in the development of this car. The shifter is a major Part of the track driving equation. Are you telling me of all the people that drove this car during development(including Parnelli himself) no one whispered to the engineers, "hey, the shifter is junk, you may want to fix that". Or someone did and they ignored it. The shifter in addition to the cooling issues, rearend issues etc. Any significant track time would have exposed all these things. Based on the speed channel special on the development, it seemed lots of track time was used. So either they ignored the issues or didn't push the car as hard as ordinary drivers are now doing. As stated above, money must have come into play.

 

[302BOB]

Ordered my MGW shifter today. Been driving my Boss since Oct, so another few weeks won't matter. It would have been nice if Ford included the MGW with the Boss, But maybe MGW couldn't keep up with Ford's production schedules. As far as the GT-500 axle backs...I don't forgive Ford for not putting them on the Boss!

 

[Justin]

Ordered my MGW shifter today. Been driving my Boss since Oct, so another few weeks won't matter. It would have been nice if Ford included the MGW with the Boss, But maybe MGW couldn't keep up with Ford's production schedules. As far as the GT-500 axle backs...I don't forgive Ford for not putting them on the Boss!

yeah I agree that the GT500 mufflers should have come stock on the car.

 

[CaliMR]

Although the assist spring could be binding it's not the only reason the clutch sticks. Here is why I say this. Ford put a substandard flywheel in the GT 500. They warped. The shaft on the transmission also had the wrong clearance and wrong lube. This caused the clutch to hang up and warp the flywheel which damaged the clutch and in turn damaged some syncro's. There is a TSB for this.

Now they contract with China to build a transmission (MT 82) China has many known quality control issues. It's just the way they do things there. Also Ford installs a shifter that has too much deflection with a rear mount that clearly allows the shifter to have even further deflection to the point that aligning up on the mechanisms to properly complete the gear selection is impaired. Then they put the wrong lube in the transmission.

No question those two examples are the result of either some or all of the following, poor design, engineering and lack of adequate testing required to make sure the product was OK.

When I think about the clutch pedal assembly. I wonder what could be happening to it at higher RPMs rather than lower RPMs. It shouldn't be different for higher RPMs. If the assist spring was causing the clutches to stick Ford would have released a TSB for removal of it. That would be an easy fix with a low cost associated with it. I believe they know now what the problem is and the cost is huge so they have made some changes to the current models and are holding there breath until ours are out of warranty. That's the way it works. There will be a fix however. The aftermarket is waiting to pounce on this as soon as our warranties are out and they can make some money on it. That's also the way that works.

I have mentioned this before. I believe something was lacking in the development of this car. The shifter is a major Part of the track driving equation. Are you telling me of all the people that drove this car during development(including Parnelli himself) no one whispered to the engineers, "hey, the shifter is junk, you may want to fix that". Or someone did and they ignored it. The shifter in addition to the cooling issues, rearend issues etc. Any significant track time would have exposed all these things. Based on the speed channel special on the development, it seemed lots of track time was used. So either they ignored the issues or didn't push the car as hard as ordinary drivers are now doing. As stated above, money must have come into play.

It's possible there were less issues with the prototypes and one offs, as they were probably hand made and strictly quality controlled. I have read many reports, and dealt with a few, of prototypes being good then the mass produced version being junk. It seems to be more common with Chinese parts, but it is not a new phenomena nor is it isolated to Chinese parts. For instance, several manufacturers have had problems recently with springs being out of spec. I seem to remember Ford being one of them with the clutch springs, but I know it has been happening with a lot of other cars and other machines. They make the first round good, then when the qq inspectors start slacking on testing they start using lower quality metal, or shorten the cooking time to save money, etc. I am getting pretty tired of intermittent clutch and tranny issues is the only thing I know for sure.

It is also possible they just didn't care and knew about it all along. Too far into development to start over (cost wise) and they figured people would just deal with it. Ford has done that before, as I am sure have all the other OEMs. Volvo has taken a serious hit reputation wise recently for the plastic sleeves they knew were junk and kept putting in the outdrives anyways, ours has broken 4 times until we were able to source a metal replacement. Unacceptable for a brand new boat, especially one that was purpose built for offshore fishing rather than lakes. Our mechanic is the one who did the testing for the class action lawsuit, and it looks like Volvo did it because they had already purchased millions in sleeves and did not want to have to write it off to switch to metal. Their next order after running out of plastic ones was metal, so they knew about the fix.

 

[ace72ace]

Ordered my MGW shifter today. Been driving my Boss since Oct, so another few weeks won't matter. It would have been nice if Ford included the MGW with the Boss, But maybe MGW couldn't keep up with Ford's production schedules. As far as the GT-500 axle backs...I don't forgive Ford for not putting them on the Boss!

I'm getting both for my Boss, will be a fun day when the car arrives. Not only will the MGW be going in, but also the axle backs, aluminum drive shaft, and stainless steel brake lines. Might look like an track crew with shade tree machanics I'll have working on the car. I'm hoping for good weather so the steaks, chicken wings, and ribs will be ready and waiting while we turn the wrenches.

 

[Justin]

Ordered my MGW shifter today. Been driving my Boss since Oct, so another few weeks won't matter. It would have been nice if Ford included the MGW with the Boss, But maybe MGW couldn't keep up with Ford's production schedules. As far as the GT-500 axle backs...I don't forgive Ford for not putting them on the Boss!

I'm getting both for my Boss, will be a fun day when the car arrives. Not only will the MGW be going in, but also the axle backs, aluminum drive shaft, and stainless steel brake lines. Might look like an track crew with shade tree machanics I'll have working on the car. I'm hoping for good weather so the steaks, chicken wings, and ribs will be ready and waiting while we turn the wrenches.

Dont forget the Redline MTL lol

 

[ace72ace]

How many quarts of Redline will be needed?

 

[Justin]

How many quarts of Redline will be needed?

2.7 and using the gravity method would be easier than the suction gun method for filling

 

[ace72ace]

Thanks, my buddy already mentioned we'd be using the gravity method. I'll pick up 3 qts.