Paddle shift retrofit wiring question

[cj10jeeper]

I'm helping a friend retrofit a paddle shift to his Zed and have a challenge as it's different to the layout I worked with as I built in MFSW too.

In essence the paddle shifts have 2 cables. One (the pink connector partially concealed in the photo below) plugs readily into the slip ring and onward to the gearbox. The second as shown in the photo below is a long lead with yellow and white wires. On mine I pick up a second harness and loop it into the MFSW and onwards to the slip ring which it connects intothe 4 pins on the RHS.

So has anyone fitted the paddles and directly picked up pins in the slip ring, or is there and extension harness that the seller has not provided to my friend with his steering wheel?

Appreciate this is not an easy answer, but might save me some hours of trial and error working pins out if anyone recalls their retrofit

 

[jampudding]

Old thread I realise but can you tell me - Do you have to wire the paddles all the way to the gear stick/ gear box? Or does everything work from the sterring column end?
Thanks

 

[cj10jeeper]

Yes - you have to run 2 wires from the back of the slip ring to the centre 2 connectors on the selector.

 

[jampudding]

Thanks that clears up the level of work required.
I read your article regarding your fitting of the paddle shifters, but wanted to check on this part of it. How much of the trim needs removing to run this wire from the slip ring to the shifters?
Cheers

 

[cj10jeeper]

Just the lower cowl on the column and gearshift gaiter/surround.
Rest of route is just threaded and zip tied to appropriate spots.

 

[Alemito]

I’m having this exact issue, did you manage to get it sorted?

 

[Wortmanov]

Simply put, the paddles do nothing more than switch a wire to ground.
So there's 2 wires going in (up and down +), and one wire that connects to ground. The paddle connects the up or down wire to ground.

With a multimeter you should be able to determine which wire is which. The issue I had is that I couldn't find a correct diagram for the paddles I had.
So I had to measure it. One wire should give a circuit to the up and down wire.
I started just with shift up, measured which wires had a circuit, then shift down, measured again etc, until I found the one wire that gave a circuit for both up and down. This will be your ground wire.

After that, you are left with two wires, one for upshift, one for downshift. Attach those (see further) however you want it to function.
My paddles default to pull = upshift, push = downshift - same on either side. But if you want, you can switch some pins around and get it to upshift with the left paddle and down with the right (or vice versa).

Once you have that, you simply have to connect the switched wires to the appropriate wires on the gearshifter. When in steptronic/manual mode that does exactly the same, ground either upshift or downshift wire to ground. It's kind of fun when you're testing this, tap the wire to a bare piece of metal and watch the gear change lol. See the diagram below, you need pin 2 and 3 on the gear shifter (blue/yellow or yellow and blue/green or green). Wire colors depend on which year your car is.


As for the slip ring, I have the pre facelift ring, which has no dedicated pins for this. So either you have to grab a slipring that has the pins, or (like I did) if you do not have the multi function steering wheel, you can use the pins that are reserved for that. Keep in mind, you only need two pins, the ground wire of the paddles can just be connected to the steering wheel ground point.

The second diagram here actually shows the functionality quite nicely. Note the split on the wiring from pin 2 and 3 on the steptronic switch.
They go directly to the slip ring and to the gearshift paddles.



It's a bit of a long post, but I remember how frustrated I was that I couldn't find any definitive explanation on how these work. Let alone that one of the diagrams actually matched what my multimeter was telling me

Hope this helps!