Subaru rally car question

nst68 · 9 Jun 2011 at 10:36

Bit of help please.

I'm sure I remember watching a rally program where Subaru (think it was a Legacy) had fitted a kind of semi-automatic gearbox, but the difference was that the car still had a normal gear stick and when the driver used the "paddles" the gear stick moved itself (H pattern).

Is this right or am I just imagining it?

Ta

Skeeter · 9 Jun 2011 at 13:03

All the modern rally cars have both paddles and a stick for the sequential box. As the driver uses the paddles the stick moves backwards/forwards. The stick is a backup for when the paddles fail.

Cant remember the same being done for a H pattern though...

mitchelland · 11 Jun 2011 at 21:47

I remember the H-Pattern gearbox with paddle shift. Colin McRae tested this setup on the Legacy.

MissChief · 12 Jun 2011 at 00:44

I highly doubt a H pattern shift box could be made into a sequential shift setup. Would be horribly complex.

Katoom · 12 Jun 2011 at 00:49

I would have thought it was either H or sequential/paddles.

jon.bda · 12 Jun 2011 at 10:19

Remember seeing this in action as well...found this on another site...

When I was watching the Rally XS of the Rally of Sweden on the Speed Channel, they had a little 5-minute bit on the tranny of the 04 Impreza WRC. It is in fact NOT a sequential transmission, but an H-pattern with paddle shift from Prodrive

craigieboy · 12 Jun 2011 at 13:14

I remember seeing colin using this. Every now and again he would forget about the paddles and use the gearstick. Took a bit of getting used to i guess!

jon.bda · 12 Jun 2011 at 13:16

craigieboy said:
I remember seeing colin using this. Every now and again he would forget about the paddles and use the gearstick. Took a bit of getting used to i guess!

As mentioned, the weird thing was seeing the stick moving on its own using a normal gate

. Its nothing special to see a sequential stick moving on its own nowadays, but that did look a bit odd...

Meridian · 12 Jun 2011 at 19:46

I went down to tour the Prodrive factory about three/four years ago, and at the point the Hawkeye machines were being rally-prepped. They were fitted with an automatic gear-change mechanism because on launch the driver simply couldn't change gear fast enough. It was only to cover launches, and did the 1-2-3-4 change in sequence and then disengaged. After that the driver changed gears by forward-up, backward-down with a big lever in the place you'd expect the gear lever to be. The gearbox underneath was a standard H-pattern 6-speed box, just with some fancy attachments for the launch and the forward-back changes. Prodrive commented at the time that this was unusual, with most other teams using paddle-shifts. That's as I remember anyway.

M

TB1968 · 13 Jun 2011 at 00:50

Depends if its a grp A or grp N box, the grp N box can have the sequential addition but retain the H configuration, the Grp A box is just a different beast, cost between 75-90k per box compared to 6.5k for a standard box.

Meridian · 13 Jun 2011 at 06:23

It was Chris Atkinson's WRC car we were talking about.

M