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Super drivable built auto box setup!

Every now and then someone posts saying "I'd like to upgrade my gearbox as I have an automatic Nissan Skyline". A lot of the time people say GO MANUAL and every now and then someone gets a shift kit. But every now and then someone resists the repeated insistence of people to just GO MANUAL and jumps off the deep end. I am that guy.
Now you can be that guy, at a massive, massive discount. It could almost be argued it was a decent idea.
This gearbox is a RE401B from the R34 GTT, which has been overhauled from scratch by DTM Automatics in Geelong after being dis-satisfied with the MV Kit that was previously in the car. Which died. They have made a completely custom valve body which supposedly flows amazingly, with upgraded bands and have a billet shift servo. Fancy words. This has not died, for many many years.
 
In addition to this there is a custom flex plate that has been heavily reinforced over the standard one (it's a modified version of the yellaterra flex plate for the RB30, to make sure you don't snap the stock one with your soon to be massive torque. Note: The stock one is NOT good enough for 300kw!
It has a custom Torque Converter from TCE which are one of the best in the business, according to a fair bit of googling. By "custom" I mean I went in there with the blueprints for the engine, and the dyno sheet from the most recent tune and they took that and built a stall converter purely for that purpose. It's enough to generate 5-10psi at stall near instantly which is WAY MORE than you will need to obliterate any road tyre off the line. The downside of that is such a converter creates heat, but don't worry about that, because It has twin coolers, complete with a nice digital guage to tell you the transmission temp. If you're worrying, I got it to 100C during a full session at Sandown without any kind of cooldown lap. It usually drives around town at about the 50-60 mark. This is actually under what Castrol kind of recommend for performance driving, and usually about 80C.
In otherwords, the coolers are cool.
 
But the best part about it is the PCS TCM-2000 which is a standalone ECU which will cost you about $1000 USD to buy on its own, let alone wiring it in, let alone tuning it. What this allows is for you to tune your shift maps, it allows you two different maps which is already tuned in this car, for a more pleasant "D" mode to your super hardcore triptronic/manual mode.
The best part about it all though, is that unlike other aggressive shift kits, which in order to shift hard up top, have to shift harder down low, this behaviour is reversed with the ECU. Allowing nice comfortable shifts down low, and HARD shifts when you are giving it the beans. All controllable by the TCM, and it absolutely will not shift in manual mode until you tell it, under any circumstances. If you want, you can tune the kick down/shift up parameters of the "auto" mode as well.
 
It has held 300-420KW for years. Trent @ Chequered Tuning would and has vouched for its unrelenting reliability. If it died tomorrow and I wanted I'd take it back to DTM and get them to make another one. See here ->
 
You could too, if you wanted, but if you did you'd probably be paying north of $10,000+ fitting and wiring and tuning it all.
You should buy this instead.
 
Because noone uses an auto, before this comes out of the car, I'll make a short video showing it in "action" to give an idea of how livable it is or isn't at some point. If you are local to Vic, I'm happy to take you for a spin in the car so you can drive it for yourself to see if it is something you want. I'd much rather do this for any interested buyers so let me know, all the cool kids are on paddle shifters nowadays, didn't you know?

I want $3500, which is actually about the cost of the ECU, the Torque Converter and the Flex plate. I am 100% certain you will send lowballs, dear reader.
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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

okay, so this is now officially out of my car and onto the floor of my garage, ready to ship to you, or something along those lines.

In short, I miss the torque this auto supplied. Really had no idea it had such a large effect. But there you go. If you REALLY want to get going in a hurry, well, I can see why people build autos.

Anyhow, here is two videos of me driving around town very briefly.

 

As you can see, it really requires next to no effort and very little revs to get going around town, and isn't a slippy nightmare that cannot be driven because hurrr durr torque converter.

At high RPM it shifts much more severely and much quicker. As evidenced by me spinning off at Winton because I changed from 2nd to 3rd at high RPM and forgot about this.

 

 

Whoops. There's another video or two of me track "Driving" like a n00b if really concerned as to how well it shifts or doesn't under abuse. Mind you, this is at super low boost (12psi) which I guesttimate at about 250kw. Useful if you're like "wow that thing really sucks power" or something.


Here's photos of all of it out of the car.

 

IMG_20171003_171543 (1).jpg

IMG_20171003_171543.jpg

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IMG_20171003_172125.jpg

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IMG_20171003_172212.jpg

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FlexPlate.jpg

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NOTE: the photo above, is what will happen to your own flex plate if you run any serious power through it. So if you're randomly reading this, have an auto, and don't want to buy this, at least consider getting a custom flex plate made!!

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  • 4 weeks later...

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