07Foose

I had a Tri-Ax in my 2001 GT and it was great. I was wondering if there was much difference between the MGW and the Tri-ax shifter, this would be going in my 07 GT? I have never heard anything bad about the MGW but I dont know anyone with one. Thanks...

Cory

TillmanSpeed

You're going to hear great things about the MGW. The shifter is really a nice piece.

I have also personally installed and sold TONS of the Tri Ax shifters with absolutely no complaints.

Either one is a good choice.

CR
Tillman Speed

05YellowGT

Do a search , there's a thread with a lot of people who changed from the Tri Ax to the MGW , and their opinions about it ...

JonCo

Here ya go http://forums.bradbarnett.net/showthread.php?t=63085

MooStang05gt

Also, take a look at TacoBill's installation thread.

http://forums.bradbarnett.net/showthread.php?t=63236

You can see how easy it is to install and what a top quality kit it is..

Bobby M.

2006GT500

I have a triax for sale if you're interested.

GRAYPNY

I have a Pro 5.0 and don't have any complaints but the MGW is supposed to be "the best" aftermarket shifter available.

RRRoamer

I ordered a MGW last week to replace my Tri-Ax. The Tri-Ax was a good shifter, but it was a lot noisier than stock and it still wasn't as good as I wanted. I get to find out this weekend if the MGW actually IS all it's cracked up to be.

One bit of trivia: There have been quite a few posts by folks that have replaced assorted stock and aftermarket shifters with the MGW shift and they have RAVED about how much better the MGW was than what they had. But I don't remember seeing one single post were a person installed the MGW and then decided they like their old shifter better.

Something to think about.

07Foose

Thanks for all the help, Going with the MGW. Also thanks to Tacobill for the great How-To's.

PonyDNA

Hi RRoamer,

Well that would be a lot like buying a $5 million dollar Hemi 'Cuda and complaining that it is too hard to steer. For that kind of money NOBODY is going to say they may have made a bad choice or it was not worth the price. Yes it is a pretty piece but IMO for that kind of money it should shift better.

Cheers!

MooStang05gt

Say Chip....

I don't get the "that kind of money" in your comment above..?? The MGW is only $295.00, the Steeda Tri-Ax is $279 and the Pro 5.0 is $289, so where is the big discrepency. For the quality of the shifter and the accessories that you receive in the kit, it's a no brainer in my book..

Case in point... a two sheet pack of 10" X 10" Dynamat is $20.00 to buy at the store, not to mention the full foam pad and two rubber boots that come in the kit...

So, I just don't get it...

Bobby M.

PonyDNA

Hi Bobby M.,

After laying under my new car for many days on end out in my garage back in April 2005 considering the mechanical design of the suspension and other details important to a German Sports and GT enthusist and suspension designer I figured out some stuff about this car. One of them was that with the squishy liquid motor mounts the engine and transmission moved around alot more than I though was reasonable and that the wierd shifter to transmission arrangement had potential to be trouble along with the fact that people had reported issues with shift quality. I never did figure out why Ford put a two-piece driveshaft in the car though.

One of the first things I installed was a set of Steeda motor mounts to try and limit engine movement and improve the chassis' reaction time. And after testing the different possible bushing hardness combinations of the Steeda motor mounts I stayed with the middle stiffness setup which semed to limit engine movement just enough to prevent shifting problems due to misalignment of the shifter body and transmission shifter rails even with a stock shifter. Using all of the soft engine mount pucks was better but I still had a slight catch in the shifter when power shifting but that was gone when using the two black and two red polyurethane motor mounts.

After fixing that issue I set about to find a shifter with a lower shifter ratio. So after having driven several of my friend's S197GT's (all with stock motor mounts), including a couple of Tri-Ax's a couple of Hurst Competition Plus shifter with the white ball and chromed slab sided handle, a Pro 5.0 and a Steeda Sport Shifter and a couple of stock shifters with Saleen Speedlabs short shift adapter block I figured out that they are not all that much different in terms of feel and shift quality. The Tri-Ax was notchy as hell and noisey as was the Pro 5.0, the Hurst was O.K. shifting and reasonably quiet but hurt my fingers when shifting up and down quickly. The Steeda Sport Shifter and the Saleen Speedlabs shift block adapter were very similar to the Hurst but with the stock shift **** I liked it a lot better. So I bought a Saleen Speedlabs shift adapter block for $29 direct for Saleen and a pair of Steeda poly shifter bushings from Gus at Steeda for $15 I was all done for $45 total. I will say that this $30 part certainly has shortened the shift throws but it may be a smidge too short IMO as the tranny has a slightly more notchy feeling. But what the heck it's a muscle car and it take muscle to shift it.

Hey, $300 is a lot of money that can be used for other stuff on my car, beer in my Freezerator or tools in my roll-a-way. For a lot of people shift quality is very important but for the difference between the $45 I have in my improved Saleen Speedlabs shifter adapter block and Steeda shifter bushings and MGW's shifter that's the price of a good adjustable Panhard bar AND the matching heavy duty Panhard bar brace or Steeda's new Adjustable Competition UCA w/UCA mount! These things are much more important to performance IMO than a fancy looking shifter that is adjustable for position and shift throw that you will never be able to see again once it is installed. Just my $0.02, YMMV.

Cheers!

MooStang05gt

OK... Chip,

You have $45 tied up in shifter improvements, but you failed to consider that the $199.00 that you paid for the Steeda motor mounts must also be included. Otherwise, your shifter would still bind under heavy torque shifts.

We can toss this ball back and forth till Hell freezes over... It just depends on what a person wants in the way of improvements to his/her ride... Just look as some of the Signatures on these forums... you will see $2000 -$4000 that people spend for 5,000 watts of sound system, hell I can't stand to turn the Mach 500 up all the way, what would I want with 5,000 watts.. but, that's me.

So, at about $245 for your mods to get shifting where you wanted it, that's not that far off of the MGW. And you can't see your motor mounts or shifter parts either... at least my shifter works like a dream and I do have a nice handle that is visible and adds to the look of my interior.

It's all a matter of what a person is looking for. But, you start taking the console and shifter boot off and removing the shifter in my car as opposed to the OEM, Steeda, Hurst or Pro 5.0 and you will immediately see the difference in hardware.

It believe it's a lot easier to install a shifter than to put in motor mounts & modify a shifter too, don't know though, I haven't changed motor mounts in years... I could be wrong.

Bobby M.

PonyDNA

Hi Bobby M.

I don't consider the cost of motor mounts in the cost of the shifter because the motor mounts were intended to address different issues that I needed to resolve regardless of the shifting problems the S197GT has. I changed the motor mounts for three reasons, primarily to reduce movement of the engine and transmission preventing the possibility that the large, bulky JBA equal length primary short tube headers would have any possibility of hitting the frame, to improve the chassis reaction time and to hopefully improve the transmission's issues with shifting. The first two items I knew would be controlled with the firm motor mounts. The improved shifting was a good guess based on measuring how much the motor moved on the dyno under full load and hearing about problems people even with N/A motors where having when powershifting.

I'm pretty good at guessing about this sort of thing but I think there was also some luck involved. I didn't think that the shifting problem could be fully resolved by the motor mounts alone but I was going to change the motor mounts anyway for header clearance and the improved chassis reaction time. So while I consider myself good I was also lucky to have thought of changing to a couple of the harder black poly motor mount pucks to see if they fixed the last little bit of shifter bind I had every once in a while with the softer red poly motor mount pucks installed. This is possible because Steeda's motor mounts are adjustable! There are four polyurethane pucks used as isolation elements in the mounts, one on top and one on the bottom of each mount which allows you to tune the firmness of the mounts. So I slipped in a hard mount puck on top of one mount and on the bottom of the other mount and promptly went down to the closest freeway on-ramp with a stop sign right before you get on the freeway and made about a dozen passes and to my surprise all shifter binding was gone and that was before I altered the stock shifter in any way!

So in reality the shift binding issue was resolved without the need to change the shifter or shifter bushings at all. I was after a more direct feeling shifter with shorter throws without the more explicit "directness" of the Steeda Tri-Ax shifter which I really did not like at all. As you know I love the Steeda designed and fabricated suspension components (just look under my car!), but the Tri-Ax shifter while good for banging gears on the street and strip IMO sucks for a road course oriented guy like me.

Based on what I have seen of the MGW design and what MGW themselves has said and claimed they still have not resolved the shifter bind issue of the S197GT when powershifting. Even MGW doesn't claim their shifter fixes the binding problem inherent in the half and half shifter mounting as used in the S197GT. What the MGW shifter gives you is a nice looking highly adjustable shifter mechanism which is extremely well made and finished which you cannot see once it is installed. To actually fully resolve the shifter bind problem you need to change the motor mounts and/or add some sort of torque limiting device to the chassis and engine. But not to worry, none of the other cars I drove with stock motor mounts and fancy Billet or O.E. based shifter housings had resolved the shifter bind issues either.

Cheers!

MooStang05gt

Hi Chip...

Like I said earlier... it is a personal thing with mods... I have a feeling I must be 20 to 30 years your senior...

There was a time that I did exactly what you are doing to your car. Only it was to my 1967 GT. Back then I started out modifying it for autocrossing, but that lead to full amateur SCCA club racing..

The car had to be race worthy, but it was also very streetable. That was one fun car to drive... a real HOOT..!!!

I can understand your reasoning about the motor mounts, that's the down side to modding... one thing leads to another. Seems like it never ends, there is always another part that you want or need to make it a little better.

MGW doesn't advertise that their shifter totally eleminates the binding, but I have not seen many of the MGW owners complaining that they are having problems powershifting... us old road racers don't need to powershift anyway.. Right!!

If I were 42 instead of 62, I would probably be doing many of the same mods that you are doing. However, my car will probably never see a road course or any real hard driving because of where I live.. Closest tracks are 200 miles away in Albuquerque.

MGW is the best of the after market shifters for the new S-197 model stangs... whether or not it is the right piece for a person is up to them... I had a Steeda-TriAx that worked very well, but I'm not sorry I changed to the MGW..

OH!! I noticed that in the list of all the after market shifters you had driven, there was no mention of the MGW... if you ever drive a car with the MGW, you may change your mind about the cost.

Cheers.... Bobby M.

PonyDNA

Hi Bobby M.,

Hey I'm a young 52 and am still very much intersted in hard core sportscar performance. I did the same thing to a 1966 2+2 in the mid '70's, I Shelby-ized it, Monte Carlo bars, relocated upper control arms, boxed front control arms, HD ball joints, adjustable Red Koni shocks all around, front discs, 4-pass radiator, Tri-Y headers and side exit exhaust, large anti-roll bar, Shelby specific springs and the extra leaf in the rear form the race cars, through the floor pan control arms Shelby used to sell to folks who wanted what Ford took away from the basic '65 GT350's, fully built race 289 bottom-end using a nodular iron crank, forged TRW pistons with 11:1 C/R and fly cut domes for pump gas and high lift cams, ported 302 heads with big valves and springs 3/4 race solid lifter cam with custom hardened pushrods and guides, Holley 750CFM w/mechanical secondaries, Edelbrock mid-rise intake port matched to the ported heads, Melling race oil pump and tool steel pump shaft, Mallory distributor custom curved etc. this was a serious race car I ran on the street with a stipped out interior and no passenge seat.

I'm not really a track racer so much any more as I have gone back to my roots, Mulholland Highway and the canyons off of the REAL Mother road. Mulholland was the place to run your sportscar or performance car back in the 60's and early '70's. If it worked well on Mulholland it was race worthy and a lot of L.A. sports and GT racecar teams tested there when nobody was looking and sometimes when they were. I've done some auto-X and run a few POC events and built cars for national level professional road racing series but I'm really more into the design and wrench work than serious organized driving.

Nobody around here I know has an MGW yet, they all have Tri-Ax's, Hurst Comp with the white ball and slab-sided lever or a modified stock shifter and most after driving my car have installed firm polyurethane motor mounts to make the shifting work as it should. Eventually somebody will buy and install an MGW and whrn they do I'll pounce. No doubt the MGW shifter is pretty, they know their machine and finish work but if you look at the underside and under the hood of my car you will see not one item that added that does not make the car go, stop or turn harder and faster, I just don't believe in it.

Cheers/Chip

superman112

well I have the MGW and its awesome.. went from the Saleen adaptor to this and its a no brainer... MGW all the way.. plus with the handle you have much more of a selection of handles.. I am using the Hurst T-handle. Love it!

anthony05gt

I had a Steeda Triax shifter in my '05 for about 18 months at almost 500 rwhp. It had to go. At that hp level it's a whole different story. I tried Prothane motor mounts.......still hit a brick wall trying to shift over 5500 rpm's. Put the MGW shifter in and all has been great for months now. Not only can I shift at over 5500 rpm's, but I can keep the gas planted on the floor at 6500 rpm's and shift as fast as my arm can move. That's results!

The reason this shifter is so good is the fact that it has something that none of the other shifters listed above have at all. It has a torsion mount on both ends of the remote beam while still retaining a solid, rigid feel. The triax and pro50 have these impressive looking billet beams which are solidly mounted to the shifter base, but that does not work when you have a shifter that's mounted to the transmission and the car's body. You have to allow for some drivetrain flex or twist even with poly motor mounts. The MGW design addresses this problem completely with the torsion mounts. The fact that it's built with all top shelf materials, comes with sound deadening materials, and has a fully adjustable throw length are the icing on the cake.

My son has a stock '05 GT too and he recently took the triax off and put an MGW on. We both feel there's no comparison even on his stocker. There's a lot of guys that talk about shifters on the forums that do not know what they are talking about at all. I'm not trying to be a know it all, but I've been through this and have installed 4 MGW shifters for people that have had other aftermarket shifters only to be amazed by the difference in performance especially the ones with big horsepower.

Buy what you want, but I say MGW all the way.

PonyDNA

Hi superman112,

Nobody said the MGW shifter wasn't impressive, the MGW just doesn't resolve the shifter mechanism binding during powershifting caused by the misalignment of the shifter body and transmission selector rails.

Well that explains it, I HATE the so called "classic" Hurst T-handle. Hated them 35 years ago and still hate them today, even the plain round ball shift ***** are better than a T-handle. Give me a grippy low suede anatomically shaped vertical shift lever like the Momo super anatomic anyday. You can shift them up and down thousands of times in a long day of canyon driving or running up PCH from L.A. to S.F. and get up and do it again on the way back down without blisters or bruising. I've been doing this it for years as one of my favorite weekend driving get-a-ways.

Cheers!

PonyDNA

Hi anthony05gt,

Finally, someone who has actually tried to consider how the MGW might work differently than the other shifter mechanisms available. Because I have not actually installed one or seen the MGW shifter in person and nobody here has one I can look at, touch and take apart to understand what is different about it I been trying to collect design details not apparent in the images I've seen. Sure I've seen photos and Taco Bill's install images but still do not understand what can possibly make the MGW shifter work better. From a mechanical design point of view the MGW shifter works exactly the same as all of the other shifters on the market with the exception of the ability to adjust shift throw distance and shift **** location.

Are you are saying that the transmission side mount is free to rotate with some torsional load on the front transmission mount shaft? Can you explain how this additional degree of freedom alters the misalignment between the transmission's shift selector and the shifter body? From what I can see as the engine and transmission are loaded they rotate and the problem seems to be that the shifter's fulcrum while in reasonably good alignment with the transmission's selector rail with the engine in a static position is out of alignment when the engine puts the drivetrain under load. How does the torsion bar correct this problem?

One other question, does the bottom of the MGW shifter's shift lever (where the transmission linkage arm mounts), rotate freely as it does with the O.E. style shifters (I.E. all other shifters)? I don't mean the linkage I mean the square linkage mount rotating around the shifter handle axis.

Cheers!