Whilst this sounds brutal, it is what in fact enables the gearbox to shift so quickly and without the use of a clutch in a correctly set up system. As mentioned above, sequential gearboxes use dog rings, which in effect force the gears together rather than smoothly engaging as they would if using a helical cut gear. Sequential gearboxes utilise straight cut gears, which have the added benefit of less power loss to the driven axle. This barrel (or drum depending on which term you'd like to use) has tracks machined around its circumference to help guide the selector forks, which in turn initiates the gear change when the barrel rotates.

On a sequential transmission, the shift lever or electric/air powered actuator (if using paddles) operates a ratchet mechanism that converts the forward and back motion of the shifter into the rotation of a selector barrel. This minimises the chance of engine damage occurring from a missed or wrongly selected gear.

We are, however, seeing sequential transmissions being used on the road more and more, but the original sole purpose of them was always intended to be for motorsport use.Ī sequential transmission can produce faster shift times than a traditional synchromesh manual transmission by using 'dog rings' whilst also restricting the driver to selecting only the next or previous gear. I suppose we should start this article with a brief overview of what a sequential gearbox is and why we'd want to use one.Ī sequential transmission is a type of manual transmission used mostly in competition motorsport vehicles. This article will be predominantly based on how we do this with a Syvecs ECU, however the theory can be utilised on a variety of engine controllers – we'd recommend checking they have the necessary feature set you need to control the gearbox and its subsidiary systems. Our second Tech Insight is going to revolve around sequential gearbox control and the appropriate systems you need in place to do this correctly and safely. Welcome back to Volume 2 of our Tech Insight series! We hope you enjoyed our first article which gave an overview of how basic maths channels are used in the motorsport world if you missed it feel free to check out the article and let us know what you think here:

Execute perfect clutchless shift