tigmeister

Hey all, I don't post too often, but read most all of the posts.

I've seen some several threads on a few forums asking how to electronically control the AW4 transmission.

While there are some very cool "stick" type shifters out there, I'm one for trying to keep it simple, cheap, reliable, clean, and in some situations, reversible.

I studied numerous posts, electronic diagrams and such, and this is what I came up with. I've been running for over a year now and it's worked great so far without any issues. I can turn it on when I want it, and off when I don't. No it's not perfect, you have to remember what gear you're in and which gear you are wanting, but I tried to lay it out so it makes sense (to me anyway) about the sequence of shifting, which is up, up, down, down, meaning toggle 1 up, toggle 2 up, toggle 1 down, toggle 2 down. That's for shifting up through the gears, reverse of that for downshifting. The third toggle is torque converter lockup, and the forth toggle is a master on/off switch to activate the switches or turn them off. The master does not effect the torque converter lockup, it works no matter what the position of the master switch.

Also, if you place the factory shifter in the appropriate gear along the switches being active and in the corresponding gear, engine braking is enforced which comes in handy on steep or long descents so you don't have to ride your brakes and you can use whichever gear you want. You can also keep the tranny in whatever gear you want as long as you want, right up to the rev limiter. One word of caution, don't lock up the torque converter up during hard acceleration, and only use in 3rd and 4th gear. It's pretty hard on the converter and trans otherwise. Also, remember to unlock the torque converter before you come to a stop. Your engine may stall if you don't unlock it. Some trannys may bypass the pressure and not stall (mine does this), but some may not. Believe me, it'll remind you if you forget to shut it off. It's like trying to stop a standard tranny without pushing in the clutch.

To hook up the switches, I just ran some wires under the console and spliced them in under the dash by the TCU.

Maybe someday I'll get around to designing my own stick version, but for now, this works for me.

Hope this makes sense with the pics.

Enjoy.

peep

Great Schematic, thanks!
You really did a clean install, very nice!

tigmeister

Thanks, I've been told I'm a little **** retentive about things like that.

canada_man

Awesome write-up, this will definitely help when I do mine, What year is your AW4 from?

tigmeister

It's from a '93 Sport.