In terms of the hardware provided, Ecliptech offers a very nice unit in a compact size. The lights are super easy to see, the packaging is nice and tidy. We love the look of this shift light compared to much more bulky units offered from other vendors.
The installation is fairly straight forward, there are three wires to be connected; ground, 12v power, and tach. In our install we wired both the ground and power into the same loom we use for Traqmate power from the battery. We have a fuse carrier between the shift light and the battery. It may be preferential to wire it through the ignition so the light is off when the car is off. For the tach setting we used the same lead that goes into our Traqmate from the DME. We covered the install of tapping the DME in our Traqmate Install. However, we could have used our OBDII connector as all 986/996 cars have the RPM signal exposed at the OBDII connector. We used Posi-Lock connectors to connect up the power and ground, and terminated the tach wire into the Traqdata adapter on our Traqmate.
Once the unit was working, we needed to calibrate it for our car. Even though Ecliptech has a pretty detailed manual, the Porsche puts out an A-typical RPM signal. Here are the changes we made for our setup specific for the Porsche 986/996 platform.
- Calibration Value: Calibration Value is covered on page 4 of the manual. For the boxster, we calibrated it down 3 steps until there was 1 flashing light. In this setting the first light comes on at 1000RPM, and the last light at 7000RPM. The manual explains how to adjust these values. Ignore the table they have in the manual, it’s incorrect when dealing with the Boxster’s RPM signal.
- RPM Set-Point Interval: We wanted our last light to come on at 6200RPM, so we needed to adjust the interval down to 100RPM from the stock setting of 1000RPM. This way we can adjust in smaller increments. The manual explains how to do this on page 9.
- Shift Points: We wanted to lower the top end value of our shift light by about 800RPM because we felt this was the top of the power band for our car. So we used a custom shift point as described on page 5 of the manual. Since we already adjusted our interval, we then needed to adjust the top end redline down. Page 5 of the manual describes this process.
Once we completed those steps, there was one last nagging problem. Once we passed the 1000RPM point, the first light would always stay lit even when the RPM came back to idle at 800RPM. We shot Tony at Ecliptech an email and he helped us understand the problem.
Hi Kenny,
I understand exactly what your problem is. First, I need to give you a
little background. The Shift-I is designed to respond to increasing RPM
“very” quickly and accurately. At the same time, the display must not
produce any undesirable flicker (lights turning on/off/on/off) which would
desensitise the driver to where the real shift point is.If for example you have the forth light turning on at 4,500rpm, if the
engine speed hovers around this engine as your cornering, this light is
going to turn on/off/on/off as you go through 4499..4500 RPM. So we
incorporated ‘hystersis’ into the display. So when the light turns on, it
takes a bit more of a significant drop in engine speed than 1 RPM. This
prevents the driver getting display flicker.This setting is adjustable and you can turn it off.
The default setting requires a drop of 350rpm or 25% (which ever is
smaller). The 25% represent the RPM difference from one light to another,
so if you have the lights going up in 1,000 increments (1,000, 2,000, 3,000
etc…) then 25% represents 25% of 1,000 (250rpm).You can reduce this to 12.5%, 6.25% or off. The user manual on page 15
shows how to change this feature.
We utilized Tony’s advice and went ahead and set the hystersis value to 6.25%. Voila, a perfectly tuned shift light. It takes a little bit of work and patience to understand the ‘language’ the shift light utilizes to customize it’s functions, but once you understand then the install is fairly quick.
The Ecliptech shift lights are available in our store now!
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