I figure this would help out all the Auto guys that have a dead TCU and need your car running now, or you want to the basics on how to make your own Shift-box. This is public information, and to be honest I am surprised there is not more threads on how to do this. There are certain people out there, that are charging OVER $100 for their shift boxes, when honestly it only costs like $10-$15 to make yourself. Yeah. Talk about profit. Well, screw them. We are Jackal users, so we believe in getting something that does the same thing as the high priced crap, for next to nothing. Complete list of parts you'll need. It's short!
-Some extra bits of colored wire. Red for power, orange for one solenoid, yellow for the other is how I did it.
-Two toggle switches, or any kind of on/off switches. I like the plastic toggle switches because they switch easy and don't lock up like the metal ones do
- Either vampire clips, or get out your solder and soldering gun. Your choice! I used V-clips so I can take all of it out easily if I need to, but soldering is fine as well.
-Wire strippers(duh) and female crimp connectors for the toggle switches.
That's it. Seriously, that's all a shift box is. Nice of them to charge over $100 for basically the same thing right? You are simply powering the two shift solenoids, and that shifts the transmission. Now that's out of the way, here's the rest of the directions.
There should be a triangle shaped plug on top of your transmission, and there should be three wires that come out of the top connector. Pay attention to the colors of these wires, they should be solid orange, and another should be yellow with a baby blue stripe. These are your A and B solenoid wires. Trace these to your TCU. It should be on the first plug of the TCU, where you find the wires. A picture of what I did is below.
Notice I have spliced into four wires. The Yellow and the Orange wires are the two solenoid wires. Run these two wires to their own separate switches. Now you'll notice I've spliced into a red wire, and a solid blue wire. The reasoning for this, is they are both power wires, and both of them shut down with the key off. I didn't want to chance running either solenoid on low voltage, so I gave each solenoid it's own power wire. You can use these wires, or you can find your own. It's your choice.
Run your power wire to one switch. One for one.
And viola! You are done! Easy right? Since I'm not a smoker, I used what was left of my ashtray, and a piece of a dashboard, to create my own shiftbox. It's the perfect length away from the shifter, but close to the fingers without being uncomfortable. Picture below.
In case you want to know, the Orange SHOULD be solenoid A, and the yellow SHOULD be Solenoid B, but I'm not 100% sure, it's been so long.
The shifting pattern goes as follows
Solenoid A ON, Solenoid B ON = First gear
Solenoid A OFF, Solenoid B ON = second gear
Solenoid A OFF, Solenoid B OFF = Third gear
Solenoid A ON, Solenoid B OFF = Overdrive/Fourth.
Take it slow and figure out which solenoid is A before you take it for a test drive. With this, the line pressure is at 100%, so your shifts are going to be rough, and straight to the point. No comfort here, just power. If your TCU is in working order, unplug it. Just the first plug will do. If you don't, when you try to shift into third, the TCU will try to shift for you. If you want the shift box to be switchable(as in if you want to flip a switch and control your shifts, and flip that switch off to let the TCU shift again) just find the shift solenoids power wire that actually gives the TCU power to the solenoids, and put a small toggle switch on that wire. With the switch off, the TCU will have no power over the solenoids so you can control them as you please. With the switch on, the TCU will have power over the solenoids and shift as normal.
Hope this helped guys! Enjoy!
