Adding levers to automatic without levers

[fletchy]

Hello,

I have a Puma Titanium mHEV 125 automatic.
The automatic gearbox does not come with levers or any way to manually shift up or own.
The gear stick has the positions P, R, N, D and L. But there is no M option.

Do you know if there is a way to somehow add a couple of buttons (levers or other) that can trigger the shift up and down ?

Thank you !

[Sparks]

Welcome to the forum...
I think you are going to be out of luck....In fact Ford have removed the Paddles from all models except the ST Powershift.

[Chocky]

No. Sell your car and buy one with levers.

[fletchy]

Yikes!
That is indeed a reason to sell it, really.

The way it always down-shifts when accelerating on the apex of the curbes and the fact that it's always going on high gear when going downhill or breaking feels pretty unsafe.

[simonr23]

Yikes!
That is indeed a reason to sell it, really.

The way it always down-shifts when accelerating on the apex of the curbes and the fact that it's always going on high gear when going downhill or breaking feels pretty unsafe.

Welcome to modern motoring. where accountants and marketers design cars, rather letting the engineers.

[Nismex]

I have the auto 125 and can’t say I have had those issues, the auto box for me only downshifts if there is little to no acceleration so just keep a steady rpm/speed and it’s fine. However in normal mode it does like to be in high a gear as possible, but it hasn’t caused me issues doing that, you could try sport mode, it seems to downshift less and keeps the rpm higher.

It has never up shifted during braking for me and going downhill the regen will rarely let the car run away, it will upshift as the rpm rises, but to be honest if the hills you are on are so steep to feel unsafe, just pop it into L, then it’ll keep the higher rpm without downshifting as much.

If you’re still having issues it’s not normal and may want to get it checked over at a Ford garage?

[137699]

It absolutely WILL be possible to retrofit paddleshift (levers).
But chances are few if any have done it so someone will need to be brave and try to retro fit the wiring & find someone to code them.

I for one would love to do it as Ford changed the spec in between my placing an order & the car being delivered - and had I known this was going to happen, I'd have ordered an ST instead of Vignale.

[Ron240]

Paddle shifters are overrated anyway.

[Sparks]

I think most on here say they don't use them after the initial novelty.
I doubt the cost, time and effort would make it worthwhile, especially on the 125 Titanium.
Plenty of kits out there to change the actual levers, but not seen a complete retrofit for the Puma. Would it also need something doing software wise?

[Chocky]

I can't think it would need much more than finding and hacking the CAN message to request a gear increment/decrement to the TCM.

Code: Select all

while( read bespoke lever controls )
   IF left lever high THEN send can.message.gear--
   ELSE IF right lever high THEN send can.message.gear++

Fix the dangling else and add a bit of debounce on the lever controls and you should be good.