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ZF Shift Patterns


Sam

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Hey just chasing some information about the 40 odd shift patterns that are there for the ZF transmission. Is anyone able to confirm which shift patterns are which/ have a description for what each pattern is?

There will be a pattern for "drive mode", "sports mode" and "manual mode"(which doesn't really matter as It'll change gear based on the input from the shifter?). I know the ZF has a strategy to help get the gearbox up to operating temp, as well as a strategy to help cool it down when its gets hot (don't know if these are just strategies or if they have a shift pattern). Which still leaves a few patterns there which I'm not 100% sure on what they actually do/ when they are used. 

Roland/ Darryl I figure you guys have gotten into the background of the PCM and might be able to give us a bit more information regarding this. If yous could help out then I'm sure there are a few people here that would appreciate it. 

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Hi Sam, I've just spoken to some of the workshops that know this information, they have all figured it out from first principles so it is a bit of a trade secret to them which we won't share.

If you want to figure it out, what I would do is set some silly numbers in the different modes and one by one drive and switch through the modes until the silly shift map comes into play. It might take you a few hours but if you do this and are happy to share the information I'm sure others would be grateful.

If I had a ZF myself this is how I would determine it. Otherwise there may be some other DIYers on here that would be happy to share.

Cheers

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That is something that can be data logged ay?

There is a thread that had a bit of this info in it. A dude created an excel file that helped with calculating shift points etc. The link shows the forum page that the file is on but you can read through the whole thread to find what you're looking for. There isn't everything there but it's better than nothing.

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That’s completely understandable Roland, thanks for asking the question.

 

@Puffwagon is it something that can be datalogged, too be honest It’s one of the things I wouldn’t expect we could data log so I’ve never looked to see if we could.  Also I’ve seen the spreadsheet before and am familiar with it and the thread. 

My 2 main things is why are there so many shift tables tables and what table is what. I’ve since gotten in contact with someone and they have shed some light on the situation. Just have to go through and make sense of it all now. 

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Rolls can tell us whether or not this is likely to be something that is included in the logging software. I read that it can be logged but this might not be the case.

If you open all of the shift tables at once (I could only fit 20 on my screen), it looks like there only half a dozen or so main tables that vary ever so slightly either way.

The first thing that occurs to me is that there are so many tables to account for adaptive learning in the various main modes of operation. I could be completely wrong about this lol.

What did you find out in the interim?

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@Puffwagon your on the money with adaptive learning. From what I have been told and what I'll be looking into, is that say for "drive" there will be numerous shift tables because of the adaptive learning of zf. For example there might be 7 tables for drive, another 7 tables for performance, 1 table for manual, 3 tables for a limp mode etc and that's how we end up with the 40 odd or how ever many tables we do have. 

The limp mode patterns should be easy to spot as they normally stop you from shifting into 1st and/or 2nd, or wont allow you to shift into higher gears which should be fairly obvious in the tables if you can read them. Performance mode generally holds onto gears a little longer than what drive will so that could help in determining a performance shift pattern over a drive one. 

Any updates on when the logger will be completed and available Rolls?

 

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For the racer out there you should look at Shift Pattern 27:

image.thumb.png.72653c159f207f5555f4f1f6998ab208.png

This is the manual shift mode. The 8000 are the output shaft speed that effectively stops the car shifting gear. From this you will see the car will down shift but not up shift gear. So if you want to go to the drags you can alter the 8000s to a speed you want the car to shift. It is not precise so you will have to work on it for your own car. 

The aim is to use this table to either get the car to shift automatically at the optimal point or give you a safety net so the car will shift automatically if you don't get your reactions perfect. The advice was originally put up on another forum by CAT600 (Blue Streak Performance who sold Circle D converters for the ZF).

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  • 5 weeks later...

Just thought I would give yous a little update and give you some more information on shift patterns as it may help some of yous out. 

After having a look at the standard ZF tune that comes in my FG F6, FG XR6T and a FG GT that I recently had a play with, it appears that Drive and Performance modes shift patterns are constant between the three of them, so if "x" shift pattern was a drive mode on the F6 it was also a drive mode on the GT & XR6T and same as performance modes. The difference I found was that shift pattern 35 through to 38 on the GT are Limp modes. The table below is shift table 35 for the GT which shows it won't allow it change down to 1st or 2nd. With the two turbo 6 cylinder shift patterns 35 through 38 still allowed the ZF to shift down to 1st and 2nd.

1398757970_Limpmode.png.a61b7c7151122245b18609cc9917f601.png   

The best way I've found to differentiate between a drive, performance, manual, limp etc mode is the characteristics of each table. For example in a limp mode the gearbox won't be able to change into certain gears and generally that's lower gears and the shift table above reflects that. If you know what the ZF will do in certain modes then you can figure out which mode is which patterns. 

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  • 6 months later...
On 9/15/2018 at 10:47 AM, Darryl@pcmtec said:

For the racer out there you should look at Shift Pattern 27:

image.thumb.png.72653c159f207f5555f4f1f6998ab208.png

This is the manual shift mode. The 8000 are the output shaft speed that effectively stops the car shifting gear. From this you will see the car will down shift but not up shift gear. So if you want to go to the drags you can alter the 8000s to a speed you want the car to shift. It is not precise so you will have to work on it for your own car. 

The aim is to use this table to either get the car to shift automatically at the optimal point or give you a safety net so the car will shift automatically if you don't get your reactions perfect. The advice was originally put up on another forum by CAT600 (Blue Streak Performance who sold Circle D converters for the ZF).

Could you explain something, if i was to change the 8000 value so the car changes what is the point of having the choice of "manual"?

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Haven't actually tried myself but I'm assuming if you change the OSS values in the shift table so at 100% throttle it'll change gear at 6300rpm and set your limiter at 6400rpm this will in theory mean you should never "miss" a gear/ hit limiter, whilst still having the ability to manually shift up and down by tapping on the shifter. Just because you're changing the value from  8000 doesn't mean you can no longer change it manually (as far as I'm aware). Just like Darryl said it may be a good little safety net to stop the car from hitting limiter and potentially damage things.

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6 minutes ago, Sam said:

Haven't actually tried myself but I'm assuming if you change the OSS values in the shift table so at 100% throttle it'll change gear at 6300rpm and set your limiter at 6400rpm this will in theory mean you should never "miss" a gear/ hit limiter, whilst still having the ability to manually shift up and down by tapping on the shifter. Just because you're changing the value from  8000 doesn't mean you can no longer change it manually (as far as I'm aware). Just like Darryl said it may be a good little safety net to stop the car from hitting limiter and potentially damage things.

Ok, thanks i understand what your saying. So i would obviously need to log the OSS to understand when it is likely to change. I guess it acts as a limiter or a  safety net so as you say it should change by itself if you miss changing manually.

Cheers Sam

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There is a excel spreadsheet floating around on hp tuners forum where you can input some information and it'll help you get into the ball park for OSS for x amount of rpm. I'll try and find a link for you. It'll get you close and from there you can adjust it until your happy.

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9 minutes ago, Sam said:

There is a excel spreadsheet floating around on hp tuners forum where you can input some information and it'll help you get into the ball park for OSS for x amount of rpm. I'll try and find a link for you. It'll get you close and from there you can adjust it until your happy.

Yes i have found that link and downloaded the file :) thankyou for offering. I have had a look at it and find i'm a bit more confused lol, but a mobile phone is probably not the best

but i gather i change the oss values as per the chart and in theory the trans should change at those speeds

Thx, Steve

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I'll try and help you out with working through the spreadsheet then as it can be a bit confusing the first time you look at it.

All the yellow cells on the spread sheet are inputs and can be changed, green cells can not be changed.

On the top let hand side you can see it ask for diff ratio, tyre height & Revs/km. Diff ratio should be pretty straight forward to work out and as for the tyre information there are tyre calculators online where you just put in your tyre size eg 285/30/20 and it'll give you revs/km and tyre height. 

Once all that is filled out you can move across and there is 3  sets of 3 tables, each table at the top of each column is again yellow which means you can change these figures and the 2 tables below are green which can not be changed. The first column top table is labelled OSS rpm, so you can copy the shift pattern straight out of your tune file and paste it here. Once you've done that you should see shift speed and engine rpm tables change which will show you with that diff ratio, tyre height etc etc and those OSS values it'll shift at this speed and this rpm. For example 1st to 2nd in the below screen shot at 98% TPS with OSS value of 1125 the car will shift at 52km/hr and the engine rpm will be 4691. Be mindful it might not be exactly that but it'll be pretty damn close to that, like I said this will get you in the ball park.

OSS.thumb.png.1af64d6238e11709468e2a48b0178b05.png

Same principle works for the next two columns. Second column of tables is for shift speed, so say you want the car to change gears at 50km/hr 1st to 2nd at 98%TPS than you put 50 into that cell and it'll change the OSS RPM and engine rpm tables so you know what OSS value you need to put into your shift table on your tune for it to change at that given speed. 

Finally the last column of tables is probably the table your looking for as you can input the engine rpm you would like the car to shift at and it'll give you the speed and OSS, put this OSS into your shift pattern table on your tune and it should shift close to the engine rpm you inputted into the top table

OSS2.thumb.png.8ff14d7fa67132caaa78979deb3fa2ce.png

 

Hopefully that helps you out a little bit, after reading it back a few times I'm not sure if it'll confuse you more or help you out.

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44 minutes ago, Sam said:

I'll try and help you out with working through the spreadsheet then as it can be a bit confusing the first time you look at it.

All the yellow cells on the spread sheet are inputs and can be changed, green cells can not be changed.

On the top let hand side you can see it ask for diff ratio, tyre height & Revs/km. Diff ratio should be pretty straight forward to work out and as for the tyre information there are tyre calculators online where you just put in your tyre size eg 285/30/20 and it'll give you revs/km and tyre height. 

Once all that is filled out you can move across and there is 3  sets of 3 tables, each table at the top of each column is again yellow which means you can change these figures and the 2 tables below are green which can not be changed. The first column top table is labelled OSS rpm, so you can copy the shift pattern straight out of your tune file and paste it here. Once you've done that you should see shift speed and engine rpm tables change which will show you with that diff ratio, tyre height etc etc and those OSS values it'll shift at this speed and this rpm. For example 1st to 2nd in the below screen shot at 98% TPS with OSS value of 1125 the car will shift at 52km/hr and the engine rpm will be 4691. Be mindful it might not be exactly that but it'll be pretty damn close to that, like I said this will get you in the ball park.

OSS.thumb.png.1af64d6238e11709468e2a48b0178b05.png

Same principle works for the next two columns. Second column of tables is for shift speed, so say you want the car to change gears at 50km/hr 1st to 2nd at 98%TPS than you put 50 into that cell and it'll change the OSS RPM and engine rpm tables so you know what OSS value you need to put into your shift table on your tune for it to change at that given speed. 

Finally the last column of tables is probably the table your looking for as you can input the engine rpm you would like the car to shift at and it'll give you the speed and OSS, put this OSS into your shift pattern table on your tune and it should shift close to the engine rpm you inputted into the top table

OSS2.thumb.png.8ff14d7fa67132caaa78979deb3fa2ce.png

 

Hopefully that helps you out a little bit, after reading it back a few times I'm not sure if it'll confuse you more or help you out.

Hi, now that you've explained it very well i must say, it makes more sense, it's quite clever isn't it?

I can't thankyou enough, you have been very helpfull :)

regards, Steve

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3 hours ago, Sam said:

There is a excel spreadsheet floating around on hp tuners forum where you can input some information and it'll help you get into the ball park for OSS for x amount of rpm. I'll try and find a link for you. It'll get you close and from there you can adjust it until your happy.

Anyone wanna post it up here?

Cheers

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  • 7 months later...
On 9/14/2018 at 10:03 AM, Roland@pcmtec said:

Hi Sam, I've just spoken to some of the workshops that know this information, they have all figured it out from first principles so it is a bit of a trade secret to them which we won't share.

If you want to figure it out, what I would do is set some silly numbers in the different modes and one by one drive and switch through the modes until the silly shift map comes into play. It might take you a few hours but if you do this and are happy to share the information I'm sure others would be grateful.

If I had a ZF myself this is how I would determine it. Otherwise there may be some other DIYers on here that would be happy to share.

Cheers

Trade secret huh? Can you label each shift pattern in the next software update with what you know what pattern is what event. Thanks!

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  • 5 months later...
  • 2 months later...

Update. The PCMTec will data log  the transmission shift patterns. There are several PID's you can select, I believe H8405 will data log the actual shift pattern the transmission is operating in. The TCM uses many patterns during driving, depending on normal or sports mode, partial or full throttle, sports mode or other driving characteristics. I noted around a dozen different shift patterns logged during a recent logging session.

It's been very useful having this data logging capability to enable the correct patterns to be adjusted as required.

Quote

 

 

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1 hour ago, Romulus said:

Update. The PCMTec will data log  the transmission shift patterns. There are several PID's you can select, I believe H8405 will data log the actual shift pattern the transmission is operating in. The TCM uses many patterns during driving, depending on normal or sports mode, partial or full throttle, sports mode or other driving characteristics. I noted around a dozen different shift patterns logged during a recent logging session.

It's been very useful having this data logging capability to enable the correct patterns to be adjusted as required.

 

Allllright, that's interesting

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1 hour ago, Romulus said:

PCMTec will data log  the transmission shift patterns

 

I've added a shitload of trans logging stuff and everything was zeroes or not working except for gear shift flag, tcc duty cycle and one or two other things. I spose I'll have to play with it a bit more and see if I can get something happening. I've tried the trans connect/disconnect and it makes no difference.

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1 hour ago, Puffwagon said:

 

I've added a shitload of trans logging stuff and everything was zeroes or not working except for gear shift flag, tcc duty cycle and one or two other things. I spose I'll have to play with it a bit more and see if I can get something happening. I've tried the trans connect/disconnect and it makes no difference.

Can you post a bug report with some more info. That is the first time we have ever heard that. 

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2 minutes ago, Roland@pcmtec said:

Can you post a bug report with some more info. That is the first time we have ever heard that. 

I'll post some more info tomorrow as it's hectic around here in the evenings with dinner making and kids etc and I can't really escape to the car lol.

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  • 3 months later...
On 4/26/2019 at 4:43 PM, fordsrule said:

Ok, thanks i understand what your saying. So i would obviously need to log the OSS to understand when it is likely to change. I guess it acts as a limiter or a  safety net so as you say it should change by itself if you miss changing manually.

Cheers Sam

i like to have my manual shift pattern have a shift point close to redline. I used to have a habbit of holding the gear shifter, when its in S and you move it slightly it will go into M mode and more times than id like to admit i smashed redline thinkin i was in S but was in M.

on a side note ive stopped holding the shifter now.

 

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  • 3 months later...
On 8/22/2020 at 1:07 PM, Romulus said:

Update. The PCMTec will data log  the transmission shift patterns. There are several PID's you can select, I believe H8405 will data log the actual shift pattern the transmission is operating in. The TCM uses many patterns during driving, depending on normal or sports mode, partial or full throttle, sports mode or other driving characteristics. I noted around a dozen different shift patterns logged during a recent logging session.

It's been very useful having this data logging capability to enable the correct patterns to be adjusted as required.

 

is H8405 only in FG or Workshop mode? i cant seem to find it in BF/Professional version.

id like to log this also, but dont seem to get much information out of the trans other than oss / temp.

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1 hour ago, Roland@pcmtec said:

Have you tried connecting to the tcm and looking under ZF DMRs to log the Trans? 

ok so i hit the trans button a few times, i have done this before but this time my computer was actually online...it connected and downloaded ZF-DMRs then they appeared.

so it seems i can see the ZF stuff now.

 

but does bring about my new issue. it seems to be ignoring the 1 to 2nd change...even at the lowest of throttle it wont go into 2nd untill its over 2krpm. the rest seem to work when you change them. strange

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