Icarus Hutchie was is in volved with the Rally car and is right when he says that the flat shift is conected to the display, however he failed to say that it is also conected to a switch on the front of the gear linkage as you will know. In our eyes the gear change is almost seamless with gear change taken within 70ms (awesome!), the geartronics kit reconises when it has engaged gear by reading a signal from the barrel that is connected to the dash display so it may be quicker depending how qiuck my arm pulls the lever. If you can get a paddle shift kit that will let you change gear in 25-35ms then that is even more awesome! but how much will that cost and in rallying a bigger set of balls would gain me more time.
I'm not having a pop at your car but geartronics is not a good shift system. When you say 'flat shift' above do you mean the GCU?
In any modern well engineered GCU the cut will be managed on a torque reduction level. For the most part Geartronics does not perform any torque reduction is merely cuts torque output completely for what it decides is the right amount of time. This is really inefficent and is actualy more wearing to components than simply reducing torque in a controled manner.
I spend about half my life dealing with gear control is some way or another. Quite a few of the cars in France last weekend were running stuff I've been involved in one way or another and its something I'm [Geek LOL] really quite pasionate about as its incredibly easy to make a system which works, incredibly difficult to make a system which works well.
Let me put it this way if you initiate a shift and it fails what does the Geartronics system do - drops to a preset strat mostly? About half the gear control calibration I do includes startegies for missed and failed shifts which also read rate of barrel rotation, linkage load etc. etc. to ensure a shift completes even if something has gone wrong enroute. A clunk and the rev limiter is not an acceptable failure mode, especialy as at this point you generaly have no choice but to lift the throttle as an effective torque reduction on the rev limiter with a cut only system isn't going to happen.
You don't need paddles to get 25MS upshifts, some of the BTCC cars are getting close to those times with manualy actuated systems!
Basicaly just gutting the spark for 40, 60 or 80ms or so is not pukka gear control in my eyes LOL
Drop me a PM and we'll have a chat about some stuff to make the box on your rally car last longer, shift quicker and reduce temps.
Cheers
M