Anyone ever adapted a real shift lever to a driving cabinet?

[drventure]

Just thinking about a future build, and I've always thought a real shift level, coupled with a gate and possibly some gas dampers would make a really nice shift mech.

Maybe too much though since many racing type cars these days use paddle shifters, which most of the gaming wheels out there already have.

Anyone seen a build making use of a real stick?

[jly]

Yes. I used Happs shifter and I had to switch the ground when not in use because my ipac will think its a stuck switch. It works great.

Jerry

[drventure]

Hmmm. I'm looking at that happ 4 speed shifter, with possibly a leather boot around it. That might do the trick nicely.

I wonder if that would work for those upshift/downshift games as well as actual 4 speed games.

[jly]

Yes it works great.

[BadMouth]

Thought you were talking about a real shifter from a car.  That would be cool, but a lot of work.
I've given is some thought.  If I had the time and money to mess around with it, I'd use a gate,
flat springs to offer resistance putting it into and pulling it out of gear.  The challenge would be
getting all the springs and microswitches mounted at the right angles.  As an example of the flat
springs I'm talking about, here are the ones used in the act labs shifter:
http://www.act-labs.com/scripts/proddetails.asp?Pid=100
I really want to do a 6-speed and a clutch when I redo my driving cab again, but can't find enough games to justify it.

As far as the Hi-Lo goes , I have 1st(up) mapped to Lo and 2nd(down) to Hi.

A few mame games use a single button that toggles Hi-Lo.
If you map both gears to the same function in mame, it will work as it should as long as someone doesn't go halfway then they will be reversed.

For some reason, I mapped the right paddle shifter on my wheel as the Hi-Lo toggle for these games.
Not very authentic, but it works for me.

[drventure]

@Badmouth

Actually, that's what I was originally thinking, using an "actual" shift mech from a car, and just modifying it/mounting it in such a way as to trigger switches instead.

now, i'm thinking it might be a pretty close approximation to pick up that 4 gear happs unit and possibly mount a slightly longer shift lever in it, then wrap it in a real boot. Mount that to a real center console and It's probably work quite nicely.

Just in the "thinking through things" stage right now though.