158: No Compromise? Why the 8HP Might Be the Ultimate Transmission

the abuse I've seen them take is is insane. There was one drift car, it was about a 650

horsepower JZ, the guy driving it was his first time at an 8-speed, getting used to the sequential

shift to set up, and he was in fifth and wanted to go to third, and he went fifth to seventh,

and then six and a half thousand rpm and dump the clutch, and I heard the JZ build up all this

torque, and I was expecting a loud bang from a towel shaft or the gearbox to explode, and it

has got some torque handling.

Welcome to the HPA TuneIn podcast, I'm Andru your host, and in this episode we're joined by

Andrew Astley from the 0-60 YouTube channel, and his day job's actually working at 8-speed in

Australia who specialise in 8 HP swaps. The 8 HP swap is definitely nothing new, but I think over

the last couple of years, at least as I've seen it, it has absolutely gone nuts in terms of its

popularity. More people are piling on the bandwagon, and I'm probably a little bit late to this

party so we wanted to talk to Andrew about what makes these 8 HP gearboxes so good.

Now my personal experience with automatic gearboxes has not really been that inspiring

from a performance aspect. Generally they're known for sapping a lot of power from your engine

and relatively slow shifts. The top shelf if you like for me was always the dog engagement

sequential gearbox, but these do come with their drawbacks and we dive into that as we go through

this podcast. We'll also talk about DCT or DSG versus the 8 HP gearbox and pros and cons of each.

Andrew talks just about the process of actually performing an 8 HP conversion, and why you

shouldn't be just rushing up to the wreckers yard and picking up the first 8 HP gearbox that you

find. This is actually a family of gearboxes and some are more popular for conversions than

others. And if you want to have a trouble free experience with your conversion, then you're

definitely going to want to purchase a gearbox that is well supported with conversion components

such as bell housing adapters. It's gonna make it much easier to get your engine up and running.

We also talk about the control strategy and how these gearbox controllers can be integrated

with your aftermarket standalone ECU. Specifically here, Andrew is working with the Turbo Lamac

controller which is arguably probably the industry leader for 8 HP swaps. Before we jump

into our chat, for those who are new to the TuneIn podcast, High Performance Academy is an online

training school. We specialize in teaching people how to build performance engines,

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to your door if you're the winner. There's no tricks here, no purchase required to get your

name into the draw. Alright enough with our introduction, let's get into our interview now.

Alright welcome to the podcast, Andrew thanks for joining us today and as always let's start by

finding out a little bit about your background specifically, how you got a passion for cars.

Well obviously thank you for having me, looking forward to this. I was definitely born into it,

so I was born in a town in England called Brackley which is about 10 minutes from Silverstone

circuit and it was a very motorsport and still is very motorsport orientated. I remember I lived

about 200 meters from the Jordan wind tunnel. Oh well that's kind of a motorsport alley over

there isn't it, you've got a lot of F1 teams kind of set up in that area. It is, it's the home of F1

and further to that my mother worked at the cafeteria at Silverstone, so school holidays,

obviously this was back in the 90s there was no, I don't know people looked at parenting very

differently but instead of being left with a babysitter she would just take us to the circuit

and throw us out and say sort yourself out for the day while I'm at work, so we would just walk

around all the teams and that's how I all got started. Just the love of cars was right in at

the deep end. Yeah I guess that kind of normalises the whole thing from the get-go doesn't it?

It does yes, yeah the passion's been there very strong, the father's very into cars,

more so motorbikes probably which I'm terrible at riding but yeah we're definitely a motorsport

family. Oh yeah so how did the passion sort of grow and when did you actually start messing

around with your own cars and you know based in the UK at that point in time you're in Australia

now which we'll get on to but you know what sort of cars have you got access to? Unfortunately

obviously I was a child in the UK I think I left when I was 14 but I do remember distinctly fitting

a stereo to one of my father's cars when I was eight or nine God knows how I knew how to do that

and he would get me to clean cars detail his cars and he was flipping and buying and selling

I always had a few cool things but I didn't really start driving till I was over here and definitely

had the desire for things I couldn't afford as a 17 year old behind the wheel. I don't think that

ever changes. No yeah you're definitely right but yeah from the get-go first cars to be honest

when I was 17 or 18 it was stereos that's what I was tinkering with and I think the first

performance modification I did I was 20 and I put a remote mount turbo on my Ford Explorer.

That's a pretty advanced modification I must say. God knows how I worked it out I still don't

think I understand how that system the turbo system worked but it and I was chasing at the time I

remember chasing zero to 100 times and it was what my first ever YouTube video ended up being a zero

to 100 time on that car back in 2006. Yeah it's a weird story to tell because I genuinely had no

idea what I was doing bolting a turbo on that engine with that stock ECU and I remember adding a

Toyota Camry cold start injected to get some extra fuel in it when it was on boost

but that was the first modification I did and I remember driving that car for two or three years.

Never blew up weirdly. I think I pulled about three seconds off my zero to 100 time and of

course no access to dinos back then we were just... Yeah obviously a touch of a side quest here

given the main direction we're going to go with this conversation but let's dive into it because

I think these little stories are always interesting piecing something together that probably shouldn't

work. I've told this story a few times about a very early turbo conversion I did on a friend's

EK Civic which involved fitting a turbo, adding a Hobbs pressure switch and an auxiliary injector

in the intercooler pipe and retarding the base timing and I'd never even contemplate that today

but hey it did the job and until someone tried a 5th gear top speed 8000 RPM run the engine

ran a long and healthy life but yeah okay so for a start remote turbo why remote?

Honestly I'd read about it someone in America doing a similar thing with the V8 Ford Explorer

which we never got in Australia and I just thought well why can't I do that and it was around the

time when the eBay turbos were starting to exist in very very early days of eBay and I kind of

worked out that I could probably do this for under a thousand dollars. Let's see if it works.

That's what started it. Okay and so the cold start auxiliary injector and how are you controlling

that you mentioned stock ECU so how are you dealing with timing or you just send it in hope?

I just had I didn't even know what ignition time it was back then yeah it would the cold start

injector was run on a hob switch that was set up so soon as about one psi of pressure in the intake

it would turn the injector on it would only run about three and a half pounds of boost before the

factory ECU would say no more. Yeah so I remember getting it to consistently not go over three psi

and it would hold the power on and not be too bad but God knows what was going on that engine

don't know how it stayed together. Yeah I mean much like that Honda Civic that I just mentioned

and I had a little three-cylinder dihatsu charade that I'd heavily modified with definitely not

enough knowledge to get by with what I was doing and you look back once you actually know what's

going on inside an engine and sort of shake your head and think how on earth did that engine

live through it but yeah I think sometimes engines are a little bit more resilient than

you actually give them credit for. Yeah I should probably should add some background at the time

I was working in a car detailing and selling cars on the weekend I was around mechanics

all week so I wasn't completely flying blind but it was definitely a I think I can do this

let's try it, there was no fear of it not working or doing anything wrong, maybe that was a bad

thing but I've always had that mentality with car stuff. I think to a degree there's a lot of

satisfaction, a lot to be learned in having an idea, maybe doing the research to see how others

have approached it which honestly these days is obviously far far easier and then just getting

your hands dirty, getting stuck in and figuring out how it all works, you're going to learn more

by doing that yourself than you are from watching a YouTube video of someone else doing it or

reading an article of some cool car that's been built to break the internet so yeah I applaud

you for getting stuck in. Let's talk a little bit about your sort of education background,

is there sort of any formal qualifications for education that like sets you up for the car world

or it's not to talk about? No it's absolutely not, back then there weren't, I don't even know if

there are other courses now that exist for high level sort of automotive technical engineering

but yeah back then it was I very much had the process of I want X car whether it was a brand

new HSV or whatever the cool car was back then and I just wanted to make the money to do it and I

was in my younger days I could spend 18 hours a day at work in the car yard, happy playing with

things, driving vehicles, I still remember every car I ever drove when I was an early salesman was

the best car in the world so it was very easy to convince people that were in the passenger seat

that it was also a really good car, I was living my best life back then just around as many cars

as I could be around but yeah no formal education at all. So it sounds like at this point in your

life the work is really just a means to an end and that's just buying the the next cool car that

you have set your sights on. It was absolutely and I probably should have had on then around the

time I had the remote mounted Ford Explorer I also had a Commodore Cup car which I was doing track

days in, yeah it was just my tow car the Ford Explorer but it was the first one that I did the

weird thing to, the weird modification so I did need to, I was conscious with money having a race

car and a tow car was expensive and you needed to be sensible and well I think sensible would

probably be not having a race car if I'm honest. No sensible, work harder and just have the race

car but yeah I don't think you'll find uh get a race car at the top of any financial sort of

advice book but um here we are, here we are anyway. Yeah now it definitely led to there was no chance

of doing any because obviously education costs money or restricts what you can earn at the time

and the same with them being an apprentice that was it wouldn't have paid for the race car.

All right well maybe sort of uh connect the dots for us up to sort of modern times what's

your being your your journey your path along the way and I guess maybe fill us in with what

you'd consider to be your automotive skill set at this point in time. At the the peak of my

adolescence we're playing with cars that Turbo Ford Explorer the business started to get a little

bit more busy a little bit more serious and I was uh we were running the car yard with my father

that led into wrecking cars because we were paying a lot of money to recondition cars at the time

so we my brother actually joined on as well and we couldn't afford to pay in all age at the time

so we started a wrecking yard this was again around that 2006 the wrecking yard turned into an eBay

store and there weren't many businesses selling car parts online back then and that again a bit

of a theme throughout my life it just exploded over the next five or six years that turned into

15 or 16 star the business was turning over four or five million and my personal cars and desires

were sort of put aside and it was I was focusing on the business for a good seven or eight years

not interesting in regards to what we're talking about today but I learn a lot about mechanics

how things operate supplying parts understanding good quality parts what's needed for specific

components to do a specific task in a specific vehicle and it was just it was down to the

pure volume of stuff that we were selling and I think in that business we we did well over 500,000

sales in the eight years um so it was a lot of reach in Australia with Australian vehicles

yeah it's uh it's not a small operation if you're 16 staff and you know turning over that sort of

volume yeah it was um it's horrible it's so busy there's so many things going on and I say horrible

because it it did take away my time to play with my toys and build my cars that sort of stuff and

that's sort of led on to around 2016 we sold that business we had another two businesses running

alongside those as well one was a motorcycle suspension business so we're doing high-end

race suspension that also spread off and we had a national mx motocross team racing with all the

factory guys that was a good sort of learning curve on building race engines race suspension

running teams that sort of stuff not in the car world which I would have liked it to have been but

definitely a cheaper way to experience the highest level of that type of motorsport

and yeah when the car parts business got sold I actually started the youtube stuff okay yeah more

so to initially it was just to teach myself about being on camera which I still don't like doing but

900 videos later I still don't like the cameras but um that led me down a path where I could justify

putting time into doing my own stuff playing with the cars I wanted to play with and not feeling

like I was wasting time sure let's talk a little bit about that because I know we've probably got a

bunch of listeners that watch a lot of automotive youtubers and maybe there's a bunch of people out

there thinking that they're going to be the next Adam LZ or Matt Armstrong what's the reality

what's the reality of starting an automotive youtube channel I probably don't have the best

praise for it because the amount of time and energy I've put into mine over the last 10 years

but even if you're not the superstar that Matt Armstrong is or Adam LZ it teaches you discipline

that I didn't even get with the business it's really good at forcing you to learn and if you're

open and honest with your audience it's a great way of learning as well because

if you say something that's not right somebody will correct you.

Yes yes you're absolutely right the youtube comment section loves to point out any minor

error or major error that you've made. Oh absolutely. And I think I mean this really

goes for social media in general and I have found this over the last 20 odd years if you're going

to put yourself out there be that Instagram, TikTok or YouTube and you're going to claim

yourself as an expert in the field which we obviously do you need to grow a pretty thick

skin because the comment section can get pretty feral. Oh absolutely and look I should be honest

as well I think I've been blessed with my comment section over the years most of my followers are

really fair and very supportive and even if I say it's not been a great business idea to

to do YouTube for me it's probably been one of the best things I've done in regards to growing

my knowledge growing me as a person and even if I've got a relatively small channel the community

that the guys have in my comment section is incredible. I feel very blessed to have the

following that I do have and I do have no regrets. That's fair and maybe my comment needs a little

bit of elaboration. Likewise I would say that we have some great followers and it's a great

community involved with HPA. It's a vocal minority and it always is no matter who you are.

But of course that vocal minority are the comments that you tend to focus in on and those are the

ones that sort of frustrate you and keep you up at night but I learned many years ago to not let

that get under my skin so I think that's just fine. I also like what you say about it's a way of

learning and I think the whole high performance academy journey has been very similar. I was a

professional tuner for 15 plus years before transitioning to high performance academy

and thanks to a university degree I think I had a pretty good way of breaking down a complex

concept and explaining it which I guess is why we have seen success. However it's interesting

when you go to present either a YouTube video or a course module on a particular topic that you

already know inside and out and you don't have anything to think about and then when you actually

start trying to explain it, you realise all of the minor little holes in your knowledge and I think

what I like about teaching is you actually end up learning the topic better than you thought you

knew it. So it's been an interesting experience like that. In order to teach something you really

have to know that topic inside and out, upside down and backwards, otherwise it doesn't work.

I couldn't agree more with that. That definitely ranged true with my experience.

Sorry, following on as well the YouTube journey really got out of control around 2020 or 2019

when I bought a particular vehicle which is what I'd say most of my followers are hanging around

for the next video for with the beautiful BMW N54 engine and to this day I'm not sure why I really

bought that car but it's that engine in particular sparked something inside me with learning how to

build engines, understand turbo systems and it really pushed me to be where I am today. And again

the knowledge that I've gained because I was trying to make a YouTube video,

I never would have got that any other way. Well I could have but it would have taken a long time

if that makes sense. Sure. For the non-BMW phonetics out there, can you give us sort of a high level

view of that engine, what makes it so special? So I think the true reason that it become popular

is it was quite capable of making a lot of power in a fairly stock form. It was BMW's first direct

injected petrol turbo engine and in stock turbo form you can make 500bhp with spending very little

on the car. That's no joke. No, it's a significant engine really. So it's a cheap performance but

they definitely got a name for themselves for being very expensive to maintain. They are a

fairly complex engine and even when I got mine it was 10 or 12 years old and it's an old BMW. So

there's oil leaks, there's lots of little maintenance issues and it was really good for the channel

because it was just a content dream. Every day I'd wake up and there was a new thing that

needed to be fixed that I could make a video about. You could call that a blessing and a curse,

I guess. It absolutely was. It absolutely was. Yeah, but I really sort of fell in love with that

engine, that platform. We ended up with a few versions of them and I ended up managing to get

my hands on the world record holder at the time for the fastest one in the world down the quarter

mile which was like a 9.8 second quarter mile. It had a single turbo conversion and a power

glide and I'd never driven a fast power glide or turbo 400 car at the time. We'd had a couple of

sort of three to 400 horsepower committals with those sort of two transmissions on them but

a fairly tight converter. But it was my first experience of a semi-high power car and this

was making around 700 wheel horsepower and I couldn't believe how bad it was to drive with a power

glide. I mean by modern standards the power glide is definitely known for handling high horsepower

but it's a pretty agricultural piece of kirt, right? Yeah that's it and they are great for

getting cars down the quarter mile. Those loose converters work when you're making a lot of power

but yeah it was horrible on the street though. Yeah, that car was it was either full song or it

was just horrible to be in and that then led me down the path of transmission conversions

which is where I am today and again just pure ass that I fell into it. It was let's see what this

DCT conversion does in my main car and then we looked at doing an 8 speed conversion in one of the

other cars that I had. OK, right well that kind of brings us up to relatively close to modern day

and obviously the reason we wanted you on the podcast is to dive into this world, particularly

of the 8 HP which has kind of become the go to conversion, well A go to conversion there

but you just mentioned DCT as well and I think let's just start by maybe for those who don't

have too much transmission or gearbox knowledge, kind of breaking things down.

So I think when I was a younger guy and I was really getting interested in cars, we always

wanted to drive something that had a manual transmission and I think actually it's a bit

of a shame these days it's almost a dying art form being able to drive stick. I'm definitely

teaching my kids to drive a manual, they've got no option there. But then once you've sort of got

your driver's license and you're tootling around in some $400 clapped out Honda or whatever I was

driving, you sort of, your hopes and dreams are at one day I'm going to have a sequential dog box,

that was the holy grail. And I've been fortunate to have a couple of those in some of our race cars

and you quickly learn that well hey they're cool and there's nothing that feels quite as cool as

pulling on a sequential lever and doing a clutchless shift and even when you're stationary and you

put the clutch in and you pull in the first gear and you get that clunk as the dog engages,

the dog's engaged, that kind of, for a car guy that's pretty cool. But they come with some

significant downsides, we can maybe talk about those. Then later on DCT or dual clutch

transmissions came around, DSG, PDK, all the same sort of thing from different manufacturers

and those were kind of the go to that kind of gave you almost the best of both worlds between

a sequential dog box with lightning fast shifts and a conventional manual gearbox.

And then obviously slush boxes or autos were never really that popular until people started

messing around with these 8HPs. So can we kind of get a high level view of the different gearbox

technologies, explain how they work at a high level and pros and cons of each, can we get that

from you? I'll definitely give you my opinion on those and it's, I say my opinion because it's the

way that I think about them all because it's probably not the most accurate way to describe them,

but obviously the manuals which have been around since day dot, they are a set of gears that you

have synchro to transition between them and then there's a clutch that the driver is fully in

control of to allow the load to be reduced to make the gear change or change in the ratios easier.

The automatics which is what my BMWs, all the cars that we had on the channel, they started

with ZF6s, they're probably more, they're getting close to a ZF8 with how they function internally,

but I think of them as a separate gear set with clutches, I can't remember the ZF6 clutch cap,

I think it's four or five, no it's four and it will use those clutches to change the ratios

while using the converter in place of the human with the normal manual clutch.

So they can change gear relatively fast allowing converter slip and transitions of the ratios

that way. Let's just actually hold up on the auto-trans for a moment and as you're speaking

there, the classic meme that probably a lot of people have seen popped into my mind where it's

a picture of a cutaway of an automatic transmission and the input end, we've got engine horsepower,

hopes and dreams and then we've got some kind of magics happening in the middle and then out the

tail shaft we get crushing disappointment. And that's kind of always been the joke of an older

automatic transmission, there is going to be torque converter slip, they tend to be,

what's the best term, maybe a little power hungry, is that fair?

Yeah and my experience with the power glide that was in my car, it was, it blew my mind how much

noise the engine was making, how much fuel was going through this engine and it's just not moving

anywhere, under four and a half thousand rpm and they operated obviously with no electronics,

so they still had, actually I don't know much about the insides of a turbo 400 or power glide,

I've never pulled one apart. We're not building these things.

No good, they obviously they've got the gear sets and they can change their ratios but they

relied on a very slippy torque converter to make it a smooth ride for the driver obviously.

One downside with them was there was no control over that converter, it was set when the converter

is made and you can't adjust that, which is why the powerful cars need the slippy torque converter

all the time. That's probably the best way I can describe it, the torque converter has to

be slippy to allow the ratio changes to be smooth because it is just an on-off switch between each

ratio. I think the other thing with a built auto, where maybe particularly we've seen these a lot

behind, are relatively small capacity turbo charged engines on the drag strip.

And the difficulty here is to get the engine up to an rpm range where the turbo is able to

produce sufficient boost to actually get it off the line and get a decent 60 foot, you need to

have that thing probably spinning at 6,000, 7,000 rpm, so you need a very loose converter to allow

it to actually come up on boost and then the flip side of that is trying to drive that anywhere

except down the return road at the drag strip is not going to be great for fuel economy efficiency

or your mental health. Yes, all of the above is completely what I experienced with my power

glide, but they are brilliant and they're still brilliant transmissions, they're still some of

the fastest drag cars in the world use those transmissions. But yeah, it's just it's old

technology, it's been around since the 50s and yeah, we can definitely do better with these

newer modern transmissions. You touched on it before about the power losses through the

old automatics and even the ZF6s, mind you, they're not too bad with the lock up clutches and the way

that they do operate. But yeah, that was my experience growing up, real men didn't drive

automatics because they were slower and you just never got that experience through the vehicle

because of the power loss. You expected an automatic to be a slower car. This is street car

sub 500 horsepower sort of stuff as well. Yeah, things changed a little bit on the drag strip,

but that's a very niche area of motorsport. And what I mean by this is if you had the same

engine with the same power with a manual dog box that could shift quickly and you compared the

mile an hour and ET to a well built power glide for example, you'd often find that you might lose

a little bit of mile an hour and the auto chance because of the power loss, but you're probably

going to find that it'll be more controllable to the 60 foot. It'll be actually quicker to get to

the end of the strip. So your ET might come down, but your mile an hour might also drop a little

bit as well. Is that sort of a fair way of explaining it? Oh absolutely, I guess we probably

should mention as well because I'm sure people will correct us in the comments about the lock

up clutches that have come around for turbo 400s and they do exist which help with mile an hour

stuff. But the whole key to those transmissions operating at different vehicle speeds is that

loose converter and allowing the engine to be in the sweet spot regardless of what the

rear wheels are doing or the speed the rear wheels are doing, I should probably say.

Actually before we move on as well, I'll just add another little anecdote in here which came from

my drag racing days and for a number of years I was involved with the New Zealand based heat

treatments racing team. And Reese who was driving his GTR, so this is a Nissan R32 GTR

and at the time that was retired it held the world record as the fastest outright four wheel

drive car. I think it was, well clear it was the fastest GTR in the world as well. This is well

before R35s were ever on the scene so don't jump in the comments and say you know people are running

much quicker than that, yes I'm well aware of that. But where I was going with this is that car

was built around a air shifted five speed Liberty gearbox and it used a proper slider style drag

racing clutch. And to watch that car go down the drag strip which at the time it was around

circa 1500 wheel horsepower while I was tuning it and that car was an absolute handful. The only way

they could extract ETM while an hour out of it was to transport it over to Australia to Willow

Bank where you guys have some absolutely amazingly well prepped drag strips but even there the car

on every gear shift would head towards the left wall or the right wall and I don't know how Reese

hung on to this thing but it was just an absolute handful of a ride. So if we fast forward now to

the GTR market over in Australia that's just exploded and there's a bunch of cars in the

mixers making 2500 horsepower so no the 1000 horsepower plus but they've all gone to an

auto transmission and I think the advantages come from how much smoother the shifts are compared

to that Liberty and it doesn't upset the traction on the gear shifts and that was what was making

the heat treatments car so hard to drive. I mean we could have probably thrown another

1000 horsepower at it but what was the point, it would have just gone into the wall in second

gear instead of fifth. So that's some of the subtle aspects that come with that automatic

transmission that may be automatically obvious. Yeah look I've got to be honest, I was not

truly appreciative of how beneficial that is when you do get into the high power cars.

My personal cars I sort of peaked around 700 horsepower but there's been a few at the shop

that we've been involved with around 1000 or just over 1000 and you can't change those gear ratios

quickly. They will unsettle the tyres and yeah I think this is the drivability of the old school

autos and how much faster they made the cars is definitely why they've been so popular in drag

racing in particular but it's the thing that makes them fast down the strip is the thing that

makes them horrible on the street. Yeah sure. Alright okay so I think I think we've probably

got enough on the old school auto. I'd interrupted you when you were about to jump into DCT so maybe

let's jump back in there. So with the DCTs they sort of hit the OEM market 20 odd years ago now a

bit over 20 years ago and they approached the ratio change, what's the best way to word this,

so they have a traditional manual style gear set so they have synchros and they will change ratios

but they use two input shafts so they can essentially have two gears active at the same time

and then use two clutches to transition those ratios instead of transitioning the synchros

like you would in a normal manual where this was really beneficial it made the ratio change

very fast and fully computer controlled. I mean Volkswagen and Audi are brilliant at their DSGs

they're very very strong for the size of them and even BMW the DCTs that BMW were using 2007

and onwards those clutches would hold 7 800 horsepower which was incredible a stock factory

clutch would not hold that and the autos of the time would not hold that either yeah using the

hydraulic assisted clutches transitioning the ratios instantly made them a really exciting

gearbox to drive they also didn't have the mass of a torque converter so in a like a weekend

cruiser car you've got very responsive engines downshifts are brilliant and I still do to this

day think DCT will downshift better than automatic yeah they really sort of took off but they soon

hit the limits of their clutch packs because while they were a strong clutch pack compared

to a traditional manual OEM clutch they do not like being flipped and they will get hot

and the drag racing world and the high performance world sort of surpassed them

and that's where the eight speeds are starting to shine.

OK I just want to expand on a few of the points you've made there just for those who are really

on the edge of their knowledge and haven't quite put sort of connected the dots on what you've

been speaking about so with those dual clutch transmissions essentially as you've said you've

got two separate shafts each with a clutch so what they do is separate the gears into

odd and even so on one shaft we'll have 1, 3, 5 and maybe 7 and then 2, 4, 6 on the other shaft

so as you've mentioned you could have, you'll be in first gear taking off and the TCU is already

assuming that your next shift is going to be in second gear so second gear can be engaged

but the clutch deactivated so if you've got the clutch activated as well it's going to be a bad

day for a gearbox so then when you request the shift and these are now paddle shifted

gearboxes or you've got the little lever that you can sort of shift on as well, it's not a

conventional like a normal manual transmission but when you select second gear all it has to do

is disengage the clutch for the first gear and engage the clutch in the second gear so as you

mentioned sort of lightning fast shifts which probably now aren't actually that far removed

from the sort of shift speeds we would get with a sequential dog box so kind of the best of both

worlds in that respect.

You mentioned the clutch slip and the problem with these is the diameter of the clutches is much

smaller than a conventional manual with a big maybe a 7.5 inch, 9 inch clutch and you've got

multi plates and the individual clutch plates are very thin so as you mentioned almost any

amount of slip and you're just going to cook the clutches and that's the end of them.

It's made it really hard for the drag racing world, we've had Tony Paylow from T1 and the

state's on the podcast talking about his R35 GTR DCT challenges and yeah you can't

slip the clutch off the line so that makes it really difficult particularly with these bigger

turbos. Now I'd say another potential downside with the DCT boxes is they're physically bulky

and then by definition physically heavy correct?

They are, off the top of my head and please don't quote me to this, they're around 100 kilos for

the BMW 7 speed DCT, that's a transmission that I feel is pretty good around 800 horsepower

on a 6 cylinder turbo motor, I don't know how it'd go on an 800 horsepower LS but yeah

which to be fair it's about 40 kilos heavier than a power glide but in my experience and

the reason I did the DCT back then going from even a ZF6 to a DCT my car was faster with the DCT

transmission, it obviously had a few more well it's got one more ratio but the the gear transition

and the or the lesser amount of torque reduction so we better way to describe it that the car could

run with the DCT, made it faster.

Sure, now in terms of weight as well, I might not be quite on point here but looking at our

Toyota 86 endurance car which has a Hollinger paddle shifter, 6 speed dog box, I mean I think

that particular box is somewhere around about 40 kilograms so now you're talking a weight

difference of 60 and when you're building race cars, that's substantial for a road car, probably

not actually a big deal but it's dependent on the application.

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Alright let's get back to the episode.

Let's move on and talk about the ADHP which is our main topic for today.

And why has this become such an important transmission in the aftermarket world?

So it was essentially an evolution of the ZF6 with another two ratios.

They managed to package that extra gear set into the same size.

So physically the top spec ZF6 is the same size as the top spec ZF8.

And the OEMs to my understanding they went and developed this as far as they could for emissions.

Obviously 2006, 2008 Euro stands were increasing and fuel efficiency was becoming much more important.

The less slip that the transmission experiences through the torque converter means it's going to use less fuel.

And I think that's really why they developed the HB to the level they did.

The flip side of that was they've created a transmission that runs with nearly no slip.

It gives you eight ratios and that means it's a fast transmission.

There's very little loss, very little drivetrain loss through the transmission.

So essentially if we compared the output from an ADHP to a dog box,

you're not going to see a dramatic difference like you would with an older automatic transmission.

No, not at all. On the dyno that we have at work, the mainline hub dyno we generally see.

So if it's 900 horsepower with a sequential, it'll be 88890 with the eight speed.

And it's close enough that that could just be air temperature differences play in a role.

Yeah, yeah.

And the thing that I always worked on with the YouTube videos was draggy times.

And yeah, the eight speed was four tenths of a second faster than the ZF6.

Wow. Yeah, that's no joke.

And that was on a 100 to 200. So on a quarter mile again, it's going to be a bigger difference again.

Yeah, the big thing that makes the eight speed so popular for the aftermarket world

and why I think they've sort of taken off so well is talking back about the clutch packs for the DCTs.

You have the two clutch packs. The eight speed has five and they're a very similar size to the DCT clutches.

So you've essentially got an extra three clutches to manage that torque.

And the way the eight speed works, it uses three of them per gear ratio.

So you have to have three clutches engaged.

So at any point in time, you've got a fairly large amount of clutch surface area.

So the torque handling capability is not as limited as a conventional DCT?

No, no, it's incredible. You can slip the hell out of an eight speed.

Especially with the converter as well for launching where you're really slipping the converter.

But in a lot of the drift cars we've set up, I remember in the early days being concerned about putting clutch pedals on them.

And the abuse I've seen them take is insane.

There was one drift car. It was about a 650 horsepower JZ.

The guy driving, it was his first time at an eight speed, getting used to the sequential shifter setup.

And he was in fifth and wanted to go to third and he went fifth to seventh and then six and a half thousand RPM and double clutch.

And I thought, I heard the JZ build up all this torque and I was expecting a loud bang from a towel shaft or the gearbox to explode.

And it just bogged down and spun the tyres in seventh and I was like oh shit, this thing, this has got some torque handling.

Alright a couple more questions before we sort of move on further.

You've mentioned the clutches, you've mentioned the extra gears, the lack of slip compared to a conventional automatic transmission.

As I understand it though, shift times as well can be dramatically faster on an 8HP, is that correct?

So there's a few different ways to think about this.

So a DCT to my knowledge currently has the fastest official clutch time between the two transmissions.

And I think they, I think I've seen data logs where they're shifting around 180 milliseconds.

I haven't seen an 8-speed shift that fast, but the 8-speed from the logic that I've been able to see from the ones I've played with,

they shift in a different way. The DCT, you really don't want to cross fade that clutch transition.

You want to turn one off and then turn the new one on, where with the 8-speed they're quite happy transitioning.

So you do, every time they do change, there is a little bit of clutch bind,

but that allows you to have say a 300 or 400 millisecond shift while maintaining a good amount of torque going to the back wheels.

So a properly set up 8-speed with a decent controller on your acceleration curve, you won't be able to see the shifts at all.

Yeah okay so if we come back to a conventional dog box or a DCT, typically we need some kind of torque reduction

to allow the shift to occur. In a dog engagement gearbox, the design of the dogs have a back cut.

So if we're in second gear and we're at full throttle, no amount of force from your arm is going to pull that gearbox

out of second gear. What you physically need is a torque reduction to allow the dogs to disengage

in the next gear to engage. Typically that might be done by an ignition cart, a fuel cart,

or a lift on the throttle, but something needs to reduce that engine torque.

So even though it might only be an 80 millisecond torque reduction, that's 80 milliseconds where you don't

have full engine torque, so what you're saying is, and the same goes with the DCT as I mentioned,

what you're saying is you don't really need that torque reduction, you can shift while maintaining

almost full torque?

Yeah, from my experience I like to keep it sensible, stay under 700 horsepower, you can definitely shift

and maintain full torque, allowing a little bit of a crossfade so you don't get the sharp RPM drop

that you'll get with a sequential or DCT, but that means that the amount of torque that's making it to the

rear wheels is higher over the period of the shift. I hope that translates to something that makes sense to everyone.

Yeah I think that makes sense and I guess that would also coincide with the aspect that I was mentioning

before where we're not really kind of upsetting the traction to the rear wheels during that shift.

100% but yeah, unlike using just the slip from the converter, it's a fairly tight way to do that.

It's a little bit of a contentious subject because a lot of people do like that sharp RPM drop,

they like the torque reduction sound, whether it's a shift cut or however it's being done with a specific ECU,

but with the eight speeds you don't need to shift them that way and if you're trying to chase fast times

there's nice data smooth transition.

Yeah I would say as well that the more I've learned and the more I've been involved with transmission tuning

and I'm talking here about conventional dog engagement gearboxes, the cool sort of pop out the exhaust

from an ignition cut, yeah it sounds great, it sort of makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up

and in most instances it's not the best for your engine.

So I unfortunately have a Toyota 86 with that Hollinger gearbox in it and the shifts make absolutely no sound

because I am using fuel cut and ignition retard to try and soften everything on the valve train

and keep the engine alive, that's much more important than it sounding cool to me.

Yes, no comment, I like the sound.

Me too, me too.

Alright now, so far we've sort of talked about 8HP as if that is a single gearbox but this is a family of gearboxes?

Yeah definitely, they're on their third generation, well actually that's not true, the fourth generation has recently been released

the majority of my experience has been with the particular 8HP 70 variant.

I guess the best way that I should think about them to a novice, they've got the baby boxes and the big boxes

so the first generation was the 8HP 45 in the small range and the 8HP 70 in the larger boxes

and I say the larger boxes, there is also a 90 which is the box used in like a Dodge Demon

so the highest capacity of the V12 turbo BMWs, they use the 90 series

but there's not a huge difference in the hardware between the 70 and the 90.

So from the swap world I always try and go for a 70 because the donor transmission is much cheaper to start with

but the numbers relate to the factory rated torque handling, so the small one was rated to 450 Nm and the large one 700.

My experience with the small boxes is pretty limited, I started using a 70, I like the way the 70s feel

and I try and whenever we're speccing something with a customer, I'll try and recommend to use a box that's stronger than they need

and that does allow you to lean on the clutches a lot more if you're chasing records

or you're trying to have an ultimately fast car, you don't need to rely on engine torque reduction to get the shifts right

where the 45s, people that I've spoken to, the guys I've spoken to tuning them,

you've got to be much more careful with what the engine's doing, they don't take the abuse.

Sure, yeah okay, and Ness there was a significant price or weight advantage in the smaller box

I would say there's no brainer to go to the 70.

Yeah and we should also mention obviously the power of the chassis is definitely relevant,

if you've got a car that makes 400 horsepower and weighs 1200 kilos, 45 is going to be happy.

Yeah it's just the higher spec and it seems everything makes the 1000 horsepower these days in the streetcar world

and even the slower cars are still 600 or 700 horsepower and I do speak to people quite often

and they're trying to use a 45 or a 50 in that power range and it doesn't end well.

It is cheaper, it is a smaller box but it doesn't end well.

In terms of the vehicles we're going to source these out of, you've mentioned so far Dodge and BMW

is that sort of the main OEs that we're using the AHP and are there specific models in the BMW world

that you're looking at to source a donor box?

So the amount of manufacturers that use them is, I still find it quite surprising.

Obviously in the last 10 years there's been a lot of new Chinese manufacturers into the marketplace

but speaking to the more common brands, so Porsche, BMW, Jaguar, Land Rover, Dodge over in the States

they were all using AHPs and as many models as they could with the Dodge versus Jeep

and their whole family of vehicles as well.

But the thing that's been a challenge for the swap guys is you need to be able to adapt it to your engine.

So throughout the, as all the swaps have evolved there's more and more adapters popping up

and more adapters made to suit a larger range of transmissions if that makes sense.

But a lot of my experience and a lot of my knowledge is on the BMW ones.

I always try and use them because I know of the little caveats or the little weird knobs that might hang in the way

there'll be a problem in a tunnel and all the little weird stuff and they are all different.

All got the same clutches but the cases are all very different.

Yep, in terms of what, this might be just a constantly moving target

but in terms of what someone's going to expect to pay for one of these 700nm rated AHPs

can you have ballparkers in AUD?

In AUD in our market it's the $4,000 to $5,000 mark currently.

Certain swaps might be a little bit higher, some might be a bit lower

but if you have that as a ballpark figure you're pretty safe.

In Europe that number is much less, there are much more common transmission to get the ones that we want for the swaps

and in America I see numbers floating around that I get very jealous of

but again there's a lot more boxes in the wrecking yards and I think there's just a lot more used transmissions available

and the adapters are there now for the Dodge AHPs, the Jeep AHPs

even the Jeep EcoDiesel, they had an AHP70 in there.

The whole car is not worth a lot of money in America so you can get the gearboxes very cheap.

From what I see I think we have to pay the most for these transmissions in the world.

Lucky, lucky you. I haven't really been shopping around but New Zealand and Australia tend to share our economics

so I would imagine the same would go for us over here.

While you've been talking and about all of the different variations from different manufacturers,

am I right here in guessing that if you've got an engine or a chassis and engine that is supported by someone

that's doing an AHP swap, that your first port of call is probably not going to go to your local wrecker

and just buy the first AHP you find but rather source a conversion package which might be the gearbox itself

plus the most important part of this is going to be the adapter between the bell housing of the gearbox and your block.

Yeah 100% correct, it sucks.

So many people see a cheap eight speed, still almost a weekly occurrence.

I'll speak to someone that's managed to buy one from an LDV because it was $500

and unfortunately you can't use them in the swaps here because the adapters don't exist.

So my recommendation is obviously start with your engine, find what adapters are available

and then what transmissions those adapters will suit.

As there's been more controllers entering the market as well, depending on which way you want to go with control

that does also limit the compatible brains that you're going to use in these transmissions

because the OEM hardware does vary throughout the generations.

Yeah we'll get on to the control strategy soon because that's kind of as I see it make or break

but first of all we physically need to get the transmission actually fitted up behind our engine.

So it's not just going to be a case of adapting the automatic transmission, the AHP behind our engine,

it's also adapting the torque converter to the back of the crankshaft.

So typically in an automatic transmission equipped engine you don't have a flywheel on the end of your crankshaft,

you've got a flex plate and then the torque converter bolts up to that.

Am I safe to assume that the same goes with an AHP?

Yeah I do, I completely glossed over it.

So all of the adapter kits that we've ever been involved in, they also come with the adapters

to make sure that the original converter bolts up.

Yeah okay, I mean it makes sense, one is useless without the other essentially.

100% yes, but I do also still see people realising or not realising that the converters are different

and each engine has its own torque converter.

So even BMW might use three or four different torque converters in the same transmission.

Alright so that gets us bolted up behind the engine with our torque converter in place ready to do its job.

I'm kind of going out on a limb here and assuming that physically the AHP is going to be a bigger gearbox

if you're converting from a factory manual transmission, am I right?

So T56s or TR6060s are a very similar size.

Okay.

Yeah we always try and use a particular N57 variant of the AHP, it's quite a nice small bell housing.

So on that transition from engine block into the tunnel is normally pretty safe.

The thing that is always an issue, well the only thing that is an issue is the rear section of the box.

The AHP maintains its height quite a long way back where a lot of older transmissions will taper down to the output flange.

That's normally the biggest issue we see right at the back of the box but they fit in most 1990s on the tunnels.

Okay alright.

So if I'm looking at the rest of the physical conversion, there's going to be a transmission cross member to mount that into the chassis

and support it, obviously we need to make up a tail shaft.

I mean there's nothing different here than any engine conversion, that just goes with the territory.

One other sort of question that popped into my mind, normally when we're talking about a conventional automatic

transmission, the final drive, if we've got an OE vehicle that came out with an auto version

or auto option and a manual transmission option, typically in my experience the auto will always

have a much, much taller final drive than the manual variant.

Does this go for AHP and kind of the question I'm aiming at here is would we need to make an adjustment to the final drive

if we're taking out a manual and fitting an AHP?

So generally you can get away with not changing your diff ratio.

It's not ideal but you do have those eight ratios to play with.

A lot of the swaps that we do don't change the diff ratios and we just don't use first gear in the AHP.

They do have a double overdrive, so 7th and 8th are both overdrive.

I'm going to get the ratio wrong but it's around a 0.7 for 8th gear.

But yeah, most swaps don't need the diffs, assuming that under a 411, when you're on a 43 or higher,

you're getting to the point where you're not going to use 2nd gear as well.

It's sort of eroding some of the advantages of having 8 gears in the first place.

You're hitting the nail on the head.

Most of the factory performance AHPs have a diff ratio around 3, 3.08, which is a fairly common manual diff ratio.

But yeah, 9 times out of 10 you don't need changing to diff, which is great.

OK, yeah good to know.

I mean that's obviously an added expense and an added hassle factor if you do need to change your diff ratio.

So at this point we've physically got the gearbox mounted in the car.

There's obviously an adaption required to get the shifter in there.

I assume we can probably add paddles to the back of the steering wheel as another option for shifting gear as well?

Yeah, absolutely. So they are fully electronically controlled, all of the ADHP variants that we deal with.

There were some early versions that still had a cable selector, but they don't really get used in swaps.

So essentially all you're doing is telling the controller what the driver wants to do.

So you can do it with can key pads, basic switches, which is what these sequential style shifters are.

So you get that nearly sequential feel, nearly.

Or paddles, yeah, the way that you control the ADHP comes down to the controller

and how it's going to communicate with the driver I guess.

OK, which kind of brings me to what on face value I would say is probably the biggest challenge

of the whole conversion is actually controlling the transmission and making it interface

with the rest of your car electronics and most importantly your ECU.

And whether that's a factory ECU or more likely I'm guessing probably at this point

you're an aftermarket standalone ECU. So explain the level and when it comes to the control side of things.

So something, and I don't want to sound too warning about this, but the control of an ADHP is quite complex.

The way that they calculate clutch pressures to make them smooth, hold torque,

there's a lot of calculations going on. The controller that I started my HB journey with

is the Turbolamic. Currently to this day it's the only full standalone purpose built controller

for this application. And I say it in that way because the other methods that exist,

they manipulate data that's coming into the factory TCU.

So there's pros and cons to both. There's definitely more things to do when you're setting up a full standalone unit

like a full standalone aftermarket engine ECU. But the control strategies are insane

even with the aftermarket stuff and you've got to get stuff right to get the good result.

OK, in terms of I guess interface between, let's say you've gone Turbolamic which I guess

as I understand it is probably still one of the better options on the market

or more complete options as you've sort of alluded to. What do you need to do,

let's say we're running a Haltech Nexus. So it's running the engine quite happily,

you're making 700, 800 horsepower. What's the sort of required communication path between a Haltech

or you can use any other ECU you want and that Turbolamic controller for the TCU?

I guess to start at the core of what we're doing here, we're trying to make sure that the gearbox

knows how to change gear and in all of the 8 speed and DCT applications that I'm aware of

it's all torque model based. So the transmission needs to know what the engine's doing,

what RPM and what torque it's producing in order to apply the correct amount of pressure

and not just the amount of pressure but the speed that it applies the pressure to the clutches is a big thing.

So they all use torque and there's different ways to get torque values into all of the

aftermarket 8 HP and DCT control. With a Haltech in particular, we would use the internal torque model

in the Turbolamic and it will convert the RPM map data and throttle position data

into an internal torque map. The other controllers that exist, they do a similar calculation

but you haven't got quite the same amount of control over the way that it's done.

The CAN-TCU which is a really good setup for the CAN control, I call them CAN control

because they're taking data from the Haltech and converting it to something the factory BMW

transmission wants to see but they use a fuel model to calculate torque.

Yeah it all comes down to torque though and nearly every single setup is different based on

the engine ECU or controller.

I could see the potential to have that torque calculation or torque model significantly

skewed from what's actually happening. Have you got the ability with these controllers to

I guess, would you call it a fudge factor to make sure that the torque that the controller

is actually registering matches say what you're seeing on a dyno?

Yeah so I'll just touch on this as well. So I had no idea how important the torque was

for the first few conversions that I did. Coming from N54 land, the first three 8 speeds that I did

they were all on N54s and the base maps that we were using were all based on the N54s.

So the torque model that was in my base maps was perfect for that engine.

I see it mentioned on forums quite often, people will adjust their torque calculation

to get desired shift results and if you tell the controller that the engine's

making more torque it will shift faster and harder. My experience with doing that

it ends up causing more problems than you initially realized because all of the controllers

even the aftermarket standard line one they're trying to meet shift targets

they're trying to make it the perfect shift and you can make that they've all got modes

for super smooth or very aggressive so you can chirp the tyres and it's trying to work out

and calculate how to transition the gears to get the desired shift.

So if you tell it that it's making an extra 50 Nm it will reduce the pressure

to shift smoothly like the engine's actually making 100 Nm.

What catches me out still quite frequently, not so much with the TurboLamix

but with the OEM controllers is getting that balance of telling the torque

that the gearbox wants to shift properly before the adaptions manipulate everything.

And the problem I see if you try and make it match a dyno

that dyno might not be what the BMW is expecting because

your dyno dynamics is 50 Nm out from how BMW you calibrated that TCU

it's just not going to work properly. Or perfectly I should say.

Yeah that is a valid point. I did use the dyno just as one example

but you're absolutely spot on. I mean anyone who's been around dyno

knows that you put your car on five different dyno's and you get five different torque

and horsepower figures so useful to a point maybe only.

Yeah and I will say this, if I've got a dyno number

I will make sure that my peak numbers match and with all of these transmissions

the important area is the low load stuff. It's really easy to make any of them

shift aggressively and fast. So race justice is quite easy to calibrate and set up

but getting it smooth for all conditions when someone's stuck in traffic

and the engine might be making 20 or 30 or 40 Nm

a 20 Nm variance is a problem in that range.

So it doesn't need to be complicated, you don't need a dyno

but the way that I calibrate them all, whether it's a DCT or an 8 speed

with any controller is you have the transmission in the lowest softest

smoothest mode that's available and make sure all adaptions are zeroed out

and then you set the base torque numbers based on a perfect shift

so a nice soft smooth shift without excessive slip. So as long as you've got a controller

that shows you clutch slip you can just keep lowering your torque numbers until those

low load shifts are perfect and then generally extrapolate out

across to the peak torque range and that normally gets them 99%

of the way there. So you don't need the expensive equipment to calibrate them.

You just do it based on the vehicle. That's not sounding too scary at this stage.

In terms of the data that you just mentioned, the controller needs

am I right in assuming here that you're just taking in the case of the Haltech

the conventional CAN data stream that it uses

to transmit to a dash and that gives the control

that everything it needs in terms of RPM throttle position, manifold absolute pressure etc.

Yeah 100% that's it. The turbo-lamic torque model is the one

I've spent the most time playing with and the core of it is just

RPM versus manifold pressure. You might be able to actually touch on this a little bit.

I know OEMs calculate torque in a varying number of ways. A lot of them like

to rely on air mass in the cylinder and then converting that to a torque value

with 100 corrections around it as well. But

the turbo-lamic is an air model, an air based torque model I should say

and I think it works really well. I haven't had an engine that I haven't been able

to get it consistent across the entire power band and working well

but on the same note the fuel models work as well.

Yeah I think this is a difficult one in the aftermarket

standalone world. The OE controllers

for EC engines have been torque based for a long time

because there are a lot of advantages from doing that

and definitely around transmission control as well.

The problem I guess in the aftermarket standalone world is maybe there's not

so many advantages and as I've gone through this process with MoTeX

GPRP Pro on our Toyota 86 race car, it just adds

another layer of complexity to the configuration and tuning

process. Now having gone through that and now being familiar with it, I wouldn't say

you don't have to be a rocket scientist to do it. It's genuinely, it's not

an overly complicated task, it's just different.

And most people don't like change. So when you're used to turning a speed density

based aftermarket standalone ECU and you don't have to worry about torque

or any of these other tables, torque request tables, you do your thing

and that's what you do every day of the week, it's easy. So people kind of resist

moving to something more complicated. So I think we're going to see

aftermarket standalone stick to speed density primarily. I think there's probably going

to be a bit more background torque modelling going on

as these sort of 8HP conversions and DCT conversions.

Anything that requires accurate torque modelling becomes

more and more common I guess.

Yeah 100%, although my take on it is we don't need it.

Each ECU, they do calculate the torque

differently and your mo-tech torque is going to be different to an MTRON torque

and ultimately what we're doing with these swaps, we need the torque that the gearbox wants.

We need to know those numbers there. So even when you're

supplied a torque value into the TCU, sometimes you do need to change it anyway.

It's not that complicated, it's not, the actual

number is not that important, it's just getting the number that makes the transmission work.

I think you've probably already covered this but just for

complete transparency, I just want to dive into this.

I've had a little bit of involvement with, it was a

Volkswagen Mark V Golf Cup car which we

ran a DSG gearbox and we put a Cybex plug and play ECU on it.

And the way that communication works, so Cybex have done

all of the hard work and the CAN bus to make everything seamless.

So not a lot of work from me as a tuner but basically the communication

would go that when you request an upshift, the TCU would send a torque

reduction request through to the engine control unit.

And it would wait until the torque that's being produced

drops to that request limit before it would start the shift and once the shift's complete

then the torque would be allowed to increase again.

So as this backwards and forwards, so a two way communication was required

to make that DSG work.

Now you've sort of said that the 8HP can mostly at least up to 700 horsepower,

800 horsepower shift without a torque reduction.

At higher power levels is a torque reduction required and if so

do we need that two way communication?

So I think you can definitely make them a better experience to drive

with the two way communication. We have got a customer running

1000 wheel horsepower barrow with no torque reduction.

The ECU and the configuration that was on the engine just didn't allow it

and he just wanted to see how long it lasted and as far as I'm aware it hasn't broken yet.

So they will cop a hiding but you'll get to the point where you're pushing

through the clutches so it might be targeting a three or four hundred

millisecond shift but it's actually taken 800 milliseconds.

I haven't seen one blow through to the point where it slips for three

or four seconds but I kind of feel like you're at the point where you're

either excessively wearing the clutches or it might be faster with a little bit

of help to get those clutches to grab.

The flip side of that of course is then you need an ECU that also

can handle that two way communication and the torque reduction request

and that is going to be probably pretty limiting sort of something with custom firmware.

Yeah look most in fact I don't think many of the current offerings

so all of the current Haltec range, Link, Max ECU, I reference these three

that we hear about the most or MTRON obviously.

They will all support some sort of torque reduction request.

Where it does get a little bit tricky with the transmission swap worlds

is the way that the torque is calculated and transmitted to the controller.

If you're in an adaption area you need to make sure that you reference the torque reduction.

So if the engine makes 200 Nm in this condition without torque reduction

you apply the torque reduction but the TCU doesn't know about it.

That will cause it to think that the engine is making less power than it actually is

if that makes sense.

And then you can end up in a loop of confusion in the TCU

because it's not actually shifting at 200 Nm, it's shifting with 140 Nm.

So it definitely adds a lot of complexity.

If you want to be perfect about it, me personally, I won't use torque reduction

in the low area.

So I'll normally only use it over 300, 400 Nm.

Yeah okay.

You've used the term adaption a few times through this chat so far.

Can you just elaborate for those who've never heard that term or don't understand it,

what exactly is going on here?

So it scares me because I still don't understand them fully.

Especially the OEM ones.

With the 8 speed you've got to remember it's applying pressure to three clutches

at any time to get the gear ratio.

And when you go to the next one it transitions two of those.

And ultimately there's not a lot of sensors in that transmission.

It's only got an input speed, an output speed, and an oil temperature sensor.

So the TCU can't individually see how much pressure is at a clutch.

It relies on the way that the output shaft reacts to the pressure across all three clutches.

And the strength of these clutches I think a lot of people don't really understand.

So we're talking such a good example actually.

So I was setting up a new style of can controller.

And the guy that had done the programming hadn't set up a full transmission of an accurate newtmeter torque values.

He was new to 8 HPs and it set up 25 newtmeter jumps.

I was trying to get a car driving nice and 150 newtmeters being transmitted to the 8 HP.

And this is super low low driving as well.

The transmission would flip.

And if I changed it to whatever the transition was to get the 175 newtmeter value.

And I must have been playing in the 160 range.

So I'd either have it slipping.

I'd add 5 newtmeters, do exactly the same shift, and it would shift like a race car.

So the difference is really important at low-low.

And what the TCUs do, all of them do it.

They are continually monitoring how fast a shift time is.

It uses that across the shifts between...

Well, I know with the turbo-lamic it uses it between third and eighth gear shifts

to calculate individual clutch adaption values.

I call them adaption values.

So it will adapt the amount of pressure it applies to the clutch to get the desired shift target.

Yeah, okay, that makes sense.

And it all happens in the background.

And if you feed them bad torque values, it sort of breaks the adaption algorithm, I guess.

Because the control is trying to make adjustments on bad data, which is hard.

Yet another example of garbage in, garbage out.

Yeah, I guess it's like trying to run a closed-loop fuel on an engine ECU

where you've told it the wrong injector size.

Yeah, okay.

It's going to struggle.

Right, in terms of clutch pedals, you mentioned this earlier.

And for those who are fresh to this discussion, this sounds crazy,

why on earth would you have a clutch pedal on an automatic transmission?

And obviously the factory 8HP equipped vehicles do not come with a clutch pedal.

That would kind of defeat the purpose.

Talk us through this.

So there's something that turbo-lamic implemented.

And it exists for drifting, I've got to say.

That's where it really shines.

The amount of street cars that we put clutch pedals in,

that money never get used is quite impressive.

But yeah, because we have full control over these solenoids

and how they're driving pressure to the clutches,

you can fully override it and put the box in neutral.

But not just that, you can set it up so that it applies oil pressure to the clutches

when you release the clutch pedal in a way that makes it feel like a normal clutch.

It's surprising.

Everyone that we take on their first test drive,

if they start off with a clutch pedal,

they'll use the clutch pedal to change gear, which is quite funny.

So it works well enough to trick your brain into thinking you're driving a manual.

Initially.

I've heard from a couple of people where their experience is sitting there

stationary in first gear and they go to take off.

And if you drop that clutch pedal,

you physically have that sort of hard and throat moment

where you think the car's going to stall.

Yes, now they do look after you in that sense.

The clutches are great for drifting

and great if you want to do a little clutch kick on the street maybe,

if you would that way inclined.

Sounds like a non-essential.

I would not use that, but I don't do drifting either.

Our shop is very drift car orientated,

so we do do a lot of clutch pedal setups

and it works really well for drifting.

I'm interested, probably a subtle aspect of this

that's maybe not that important.

Just for me, driving manual transmissions,

the feel that you get from a clutch pedal in a conventional manual,

you've got a muscle memory of what you expect.

Is that kind of replicated?

Because I'm assuming here there's no need for a hydraulic master cylinder

in this system.

Correct, so there's a few different clutch emulators

or simulators on the market now.

The biggest hurdle that we find is getting it to feel like

an aggressive twin plate clutch.

Because you might have this drift car engine

that makes five or six hundred horsepower.

You don't want the clutch to feel like it's a home of the Excel.

So that's the hardest part, emulating a heavy clutch.

The way that we did it initially,

we used a sealed unit and a valve spring.

So there was a fairly, the air pressure would build up

and the spring resistance.

The pedal is close to a normal clutch,

but you don't quite get that spring resistance point

that you do feel with a pressure plate.

And the control side, you can actually program in

an initial bite, consistent bite throughout the pedal

or hit it with a heap of oil pressure.

You can completely tune the way the controller

applies pressure based on the speed

that you release the clutch pedal as well.

Which is important because we cocked it up

on the very first one we did and we turned two drive shafts

into two piece shafts immediately.

Oh, that's not fun.

Yeah, we didn't program enough of a delay.

So we programmed an instantaneous application of oil pressure

and it just munched through the drive shafts

which we're in a car that we've been drifting with a manual

for years, they can be very aggressive.

Yeah, okay.

With the clutch kick, the way that's sort of

opening up those clutches and then obviously

they're grabbing again, I mean, is it safe to assume

that there's not really a noticeable deterioration

and the life expectancy on where on those clutches?

No, we can't see anything.

One of the cars that we did late 2022,

just utter abuse, just gets started up,

burnouts, skids, and it's a drift car.

And yeah, we've changed oil on that a couple of times

and it just looks like a normal eight speed.

Okay.

The next question I've got is a bit of a selfish one

with a background in drag racing.

So automatic transmissions for drag racing,

generally a trans brake so you can engage first gear

and reverse while you're on the line

so you can get your turbo spooled up

and we've talked about the loose converter

to allow that to happen and then you let go of a button

and it's game on.

I'm guessing that trans brake's not really a thing

on the 8HP so I could assume if you had the clutch pedal,

you could launch the 8HP like a conventional manual.

Is there another alternative you'd suggest

for a pure drag racing application?

No, we just use trans brake.

Okay, so it does use a trans brake.

They do, yeah.

Interestingly enough, the factory Dodge Demon TCU

supports trans brake.

So Dodge Demon stock TCUs have trans brake.

So still in the exact same way, engaging first and reverse?

Yes, with a turbo limit you can actually do

a first, second or third and activate the brake

and yeah, it works just like a factory car,

sorry, not a factory car, like a traditional

turbo 400 or power glide wheel.

You've got that instantaneous release of the clutches

and it leaves the line.

So how about, we've talked about the loose converter

to allow it to sort of spool up

when you've got a big turbo small engine

and no low RPM torque.

How do you control what RPM you can leave

the line at with an 8HP?

So with a turbo lamac,

depending on the engine ECU that is connected to it,

we'll actually, you can program RPM set points

for the trans brake, which become like a two step

rev limiter I guess, but most people I feel

they will set that up on the engine ECU side.

So we'll just have a signal that gets sent to the engine

ECU to say trans brake is active and it will

activate a two step or however their

control strategy is on the engine side.

The turbo lamac has program functionality

for converter lock up after trans brake release.

So you can actually put it into a mode

that is different to normal driving.

So it'll actually slip the converter until 6th gear if you want.

I want to say slip the converter, not apply

converter clutch pressure, which is something

you really need to do on a high power car.

If you've got say 800 or 900 horsepower

and you're shifting at the 60 foot mark,

you need that converter slip or it's going to shock the tyres.

Yes, it sounds like a huge amount of control there.

Almost the perfect compromise

or combination of a drag racing

slider clutch with the ability to control

that slip and the automatic.

Yes, yeah the current 8HP drag record

is turbo lamac. I'm not going to mention the time

but it's the car that they work on because I can't remember the time

but it's the fastest 8 speed in the world

well into the sevens.

The control with the turbo lamac is great

because you can adjust the amount of converter clutch pressure

during a shift, you can make it run no pressure during a shift

and you can also adjust the actual clutch application

during a shift as well.

So you can really dial it into the limit of the tyres

and the surface.

It does become a bit

a layer of diminishing returns.

Obviously these turbo 400s work so well

just slipping the hell out of them until they're past the 8th mile.

But with an 8 speed if you get to the point

where the chassis can put the power down

you can lock it up and it becomes a direct

one rotation and one rotation out type of setup

and they will marlin out really well.

Yeah, OK.

Now if you're getting to the point of making

well in excess of

700 newton metres which let's be honest isn't going to be

terribly difficult if you've got a big enough engine

and big enough turbos

am I safe to assume

there are options for

aftermarket clutches etc

to make them stronger?

Yeah, absolutely.

People that are listening to this thinking about doing it

I'm fairly confident

with a 6 cylinder turbo engine around a thousand

on a stock 8 HP 70

with some sort of torque reduction

just to look after the clutches a little bit.

But we've done

quite a few builds for our lane cruiser packages

that we do in-house

and you've got quite a few different options

with ways to increase the

torque handling capacity from

braces that sit inside the stock baskets

different frictions with either more

surfacing area or different friction material

full billet baskets.

The world of 8 HP builds

has really gone nuts in the last 12 months

and yeah there's

transmissions out there that will hold

2000 newton metres with no torque reduction.

OK, sounds like

they've really overbuilt

these gearboxes based on the specifications

that they've

given for torque handling capability.

Yeah, yeah, the 70 series

of the 70 and 75 and the 76 now

they are incredible

what they'll do in stock form.

It's still surprising me when you get in a car

that makes a 1000 HP and you've got a stock gearbox

that costs 2 or 3 grand out of a

15 year old X5, it doesn't make

any sense.

No, that is insane.

Another aspect and I mean this is probably

about as far away from performance

consideration as possible but

as I get older and as I spend more time

sitting in a traffic jam

I actually start to appreciate

an automatic transmission and

drive where I just don't have to think

and it does everything for me.

And as I understand it, that's another

real benefit of the 8 HP.

You know, put it into an auto mode

and it drives

just like the best automatic transmission

you've ever experienced but then

you can have essentially

a motorsport grade

gearbox by shifting drive mode.

Yeah absolutely, but both

8 HPs and DCTs, that's their

party trick. They do, they can do

the best of both worlds for aggression and

smoothness. The smoothness side

is definitely more challenging

I think, sort of you end up going

down the path with more like an OEM wheel

trying to get all shift points and

the way the engine might react with blips

and all that sort of stuff, you can spend a lot of time

effecting it, but you can

really get these things to feel

like a brand new BMW or brand

new Dodge or whatever, whatever these vehicles

come in, whatever these gearboxes come in now.

I think what you're talking about

there really goes for just about every

aspect of the aftermarket tuning

world though. It's

relatively easy

despite what people may think to make an engine

make 1500, 2000 horsepower

at 8, 9000 RPM

with 60 psi, 80 psi

of boost pressure, but try and get

that same engine to cold start

in 40 degree heat

and maybe minus

20 with snow on the ground and then

drive smoothly in all of those

conditions as it warms up and idle

properly and start

when it's been heat soaked. Those

are the tricky parts of getting

an aftermarket setup to drive

like an OE car and that's

kind of a badge of honour I think when you

actually really nail it and someone would

just not know that the car is modified in the first place.

Yeah, that is

my goal. With anything aftermarket

I want anyone driving the car

to think it's factory, but then you can flex

some switches and have some fun in it.

Alright, so circling back to the

turbo-limit controller, I think

probably at this point you might have scared a few

people off with

maybe the complexities

of what needs to be done.

So breaking this down, do we need to

have a PhD

or work in the IT industry

in order to be able to set up

one of these turbo-limit controllers?

Do they come with

a base configuration that

with some minor changes is going to be

enough to at least get you up and running?

Do turbo-limit offer

support if you've got

problems, fill us in

and give us a bit more detail here.

It's definitely,

obviously we sell the turbo-limit sedates me

so I don't want to make it sound too

easy because you do need to put some thought into the

installation, but I think

if you've got basic understanding of

automotive electrical,

you're going to get the data into the TCU.

It takes an hour or two to set up the base tool

calculation and then you're driving

on the base maps. The base maps are really, really

good for the transmission side.

So all the work is done in the way that

X amount of Newton meters equals X amount

of pressure on certain clutches. That's all

the really hard stuff that I don't think

I could even do now.

Getting your first drive happening takes a couple

of hours and as long as you understand

how to get the data into it,

it works really well.

OK, that's sounding not

terribly scary.

Coming back, I guess you've sort of talked about this as well,

just making the car drive nice and smooth

at light load, low throttle,

road car speeds.

One of the questions I've got is

based on what the

transmission came out of, it will be pre-programmed

with automatic shift points

to suit, how would you put it,

maybe the torque delivery

of that engine. So

where I'm going with this is

I'm guessing you could get into a situation

where you've got the auto

drive mode trying to shift

way higher, maybe 3,500, 4,000 RPM

whereas the particular engine that you've actually now got it

attached to might be perfectly comfortable

at light throttle shifting at 2,500 RPM.

Is it easy enough to make changes

to that sort of shift schedule?

So with the turbo loan,

I think it's very easy.

You've got direct control over every shift point

if you want it to shift at whatever,

it will shift at that point that you set.

The OEM TCU stuff,

there's more options becoming available

for custom tunes that actually get put onto

a factory TCU.

But from the start of it, and I

you might have seen a DCT video that I did

back in 2023, that was

the biggest hurdle with the can emulation

that I come across, you would

manipulate the shift points in automatic modes

by faking the accelerator pedal position.

So the TCU

would think the pedal is in a different point if you

essentially, if you needed a higher shift point

you would tell it that the pedal is further down

or a higher percentage.

If you want a lower shift point, you pulled that percentage back

and it all happens in the background so you don't see it happening

but there's always been ways around it.

I like having direct control

in the transmission control itself

so it sees a true pedal position.

But yeah, you can

with all of the options that are out there, you can

get your auto points okay

now, these days.

Just coming back to that point

you made there about fudging

the pedal position.

I'm going out on a limb here, I assume you could

have achieved a more thorough

and arguably correct

result by reflashing the TCU directly

and changing the shift points

in the TCU and then leaving

the can gateway

providing the actual data

that would be another way about it

going about it?

Yeah, I definitely prefer to do it that way.

The one DCT car that we did back in 2023

that come back to us

a couple of times that had

launched some strange behaviors, a weird take up behaviors

and it sort of scared me off

so we haven't actually done a DCT for a customer

since 2023

and to be fair

that solution that went into that car was much better

than what was in it before which just didn't work at all

but it's been

a little bit of a goal of mine the last 12

12 months to learn how to make these DCTs work

understand the factory

TCU control strategies, how they

operate and coming from

the land of the turbo-lamic I find it much easier

when I can edit the file that's on the TCU itself

and provide accurate data

in regards to maintaining consistency

the factory stuff is so

clever. There's a reason that the transmissions

have access to so much data

in the original chassis from G-Sensor data

brake pressures and steering

angles, all these little things that affect how a shift

might need to happen

and when you've got it in a swap application

and it doesn't have access to that data

it just becomes a bit of an unknown on how it reacts

how it learns, how it adapts

Totally understandable

Even my car now

this week it learnt weird take up behavior

and I don't know why

where did this come from

but it's because of the data that I'm sending

isn't what it's expecting or what it should be

I have also seen

in the world of DCT

drag racing as well

particularly referencing back to the high power

cars I mentioned earlier

watching it, I think it was

TX2K quite a few years ago

and you'd see an R35

GTR or

a Huracan or RDR8

roll out and do the burnout

and then the car would just sit there

for a minute and a half

while the driver sort of has to do

a full control out delete and reset the whole system

because the car's just gone into

some fault mode with the transmission

so yeah there's a lot of

things that I think

maybe in the aftermarket we still don't

have a full comprehension of

the entirety of the TCU operation

and the TCU control

and that probably goes for DCT

as well as maybe even

delayed HP

100% and it's exciting

we're all learning as we go and there's improvements made

all the time

Exactly, things are going to continue to improve

just coming back to that point you made

about sort of investigating

the DCT world a little bit more thoroughly

that would beg the question

with everything we've just talked about

the 8HP

why would you?

So there was probably

at least 20 customers that

we dealt with that were pulling their DCT swaps out

which is always, it's a shame obviously

a lot of time money gets invested into

attempting a swap and they just can't

get the result they need and I wanted

to understand why

why are people having problems with DCTs

and then

it's just that inquisitiveness

I want to understand what's going on with these transmissions

how can I make it work

and ultimately it teaches me things about the 8 speed stuff

the 8 speeds are so much easier

because of the torque converter

so regardless of what the engine's doing

it can really slip the hell out of that converter

when it needs to to soften things out

as required

Yeah, it's brilliant

We've got one of our project cars

at HPA is an FD RX7

which has got a built

Bridgeport 13B

BorgWarner FR

84174 probably be good

for maybe 5

at a push, maybe 600 wheel horsepower

and it still runs the standard gearbox

which is going to

not handle that and for the last

couple of years I've been considering

should we look at maybe a DCT

conversion

and

it's been the control strategy that's sort of

put me off and I've

considered, I think it's max ECU

actually have a control strategy

or can output to talk to

I think it's maybe a BMW

TCU

and I haven't really heard

anyone who's done that and what the success

or failure's been so I'm not

that keen to be a sort of

a guinea pig and find out the hard way

that it's not quite as effective

as it should be but maybe

an 8HP 13B might be the way

so we've done a

8HP 13B

and we've done a couple actually

and they are great for drag racing

but I've got to say I think the DCT

is the right transmission to put behind a 13B

they're just, you don't have

the mass spinning on the crank so your downshifts

are a lot more snappy

it's a good point actually

but touching on the max ECU controls

they do DCT and 8HP now

my daily driver

the car that I drive to work every day is a max ECU

controlled DCT

it's forcing me to learn how to make it drive nice

and I'd say

they're easy to

get them working in a performance application

so even downshift blips when you're in manual mode

on a track that's all super easy

so don't be scared

don't be put off

there's quite a few people that have done it

it's the daily driver cars

or it's getting it to work

as well as it does when it's in the BMW chassis

that is a bit of a challenge

I must admit even with the stock 5 speed

in it

with a twin plate clutch

and a solid mounted engine

or semi rigid engine and gearbox

it's probably arguably not the nicest thing

to drive as it is and definitely

far removed from what a stock FD RX-7

would drive like

so maybe worrying about nothing

you'll be fine

I know a guy that can give you some pointers

Alright Andrew look

I think we'll start moving towards

wrapping this thing up and

as usual we've got the same three questions

we ask all of our guests

the first of those is what's next

in the future for you?

Look, they're learning about DCTs maybe

Yeah, look we've had

such a whirlwind with the 8 speed stuff

and we do sell a Toyota Lamex Max ECUs and K&T ECUs

so we're fairly in depth in

all sort of transmission swaps that are happening in Australia

but it's been out of control

I haven't had enough time to play with my own things

and do the

non-profitable learning like the DCT stuff

so I'm kind of hoping to do less

real work and more

YouTube videos, more learning

with the audience as well

that's where I'd like to get back

Bring it on! Yeah, sounding old

Second question

Is there any advice you'd give to a younger

version of yourself to help reach

where you are today in your career faster?

Yeah

Start tuning engines

I wish I did that 20 years ago

I was scared of it

and I still get a little bit nervous

but honestly

I wish I'd taken on engine tuning

earlier

and removed the

I was scared of it

You talked about it with your friends and if you play with X and Y

you blow it up

but I do wish I learned how to tune aftermarket engines

20 years ago

aftermarket engine ECUs

And you've obviously

learned that now, so what was

learning

and how have you gone about that

and what of the challenges you've found?

To be fair, a lot of me doing it now

is from your videos

I've learned a lot about the basics

and just putting it in my own cars

I did a Max ECU install on my Evo 6

because it was probably the most basic car

that I had in regards to the way the engine works

that's what I started on

I've done a Max ECU

in my single turbo E92 DCT car

Now that, I did get some help with Daniel

for the power tuning

because that one's a bit more serious

and I've just put a Cyvex on my V10 car as well

and it's

I just drive, drive to work, drive them in traffic

learn all the ways that the different

tables interact with each other

and get the conditions right

just messing around and fighting out

which is the way I've done everything

There's definitely nothing wrong with that

that's exactly how I learned

but that was mainly because back then

there was no option

there was no high performance academy

YouTube showing my age did not exist

you're basically limited to

forums and that was about it

so if you wanted to learn

you had to jump in

and just find out what

page up did and what page down did

I would say though

there is this

misconception because I hear it

in our live webinars all the time

how many engines do you have

to blow up before you learn how to tune

I mean I'd say 0

there is definitely

the two do not go hand in hand

you don't have to break eggs

figuratively speaking in this case

to make the omelette

if you understand what you're trying to achieve

and you've at least got some idea

of the air fuel ratio should be running

and you're listening for knock

and you stay away from that

there's absolutely no requirement

to break engines and really

I only have broken

engines where we've been trying to do

something that

probably shouldn't be doing

making 1400 horsepower from

a 2L 4G63

Mitsubishi never really expected that

so understandably it wasn't designed

with that intent but

get out there and do it, the other advice

I've always given is always

better to have a couple of toys of your own

and that's exactly where you are

by the sounds of it that you can play around

in your own time, you've got access

to it all day

all night, all weekend

and you can just go and learn

rather than trying to learn on a customer's car

it's possible but that's

potentially a dangerous way

of learning how to tune I believe

Yeah 100% and

the knowledge that I got from your videos

gave me the confidence and

sort of dismissed the myth

that you need to blow an engine up to learn how to tune

because you don't need to do that and I haven't done that

you don't need to be silly with how you

push the engines, aware of knock and

fuel ratios and you're fairly safe

most of the time, touch wood

until something hard of their fails

Exactly

Alright our last question for today

Andrew if people want to follow you and see

what you're up to, how are they best to do so

So my main or my only social media

presence is the YouTube channel

which is 0-60 tube

but if you're in Australia

and you've got a genuine question and want to buy some 8 speed

or DCT swap stuff, you can actually contact

me directly at 8speed.au

but yeah

if you've got a general question and you're doing

something with your own car and you're not in Australia

if you post a comment on one of my YouTube videos

I will see it. So all you guys

from the US or

Europe who are just wanting to

pick Andrew's brains on his work

time, don't be

doing that. Please don't do that

Yeah he's generous with his time

to a point but

trying to run a business here as well

we can all understand that.

Well as usual Andrew we'll put those links into

the show notes to make it easy for people to find

Look it's been really

interesting getting a bit more insight

into a gearbox that I

only really had

a brief understanding of

and you've got me to the point

where I'm quite excited about looking at what we can

put one of these into in the near future

and there's obviously some potential there as well

to add some auto tuning

worked examples to our automatic transmission tuning course

so yeah thanks for your time

we really appreciate it.

It was an absolute pleasure, thank you.

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158: No Compromise? Why the 8HP Might Be the Ultimate Transmission

About this episode

High Performance Academy

F1 teams

Ford Explorer

car detailing

tow car

wrecking yard

automotive YouTube channel

DCT

torque converter

lock up clutches

ET

two clutches

DSG

clutch slip

engine tuning

reflashing

dyno

quarter mile

clutch surface area

shift cut

8HP 70

Porsche

BMW

transmission swap

ECU

TCUs

spool up

downshift blips

8speed.au

motorsport

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