Project V8 RX-7: Part 8 – The Shifter

,

We were put in contact with James Evans and I’m not sure if he was a MotoIQ fan, but he had heard of us and was willing to help out!  We took a few measurements, sent him the old shifter as a reference and sat back and waited… a few months in fact!  Turns out SIKKY has been blowing up in the LS swap scene as THE leader in kits for the aforementioned 350Z and G35 but also S13 and S14 240’s.  They make a mount kit for sticking an SR20DET into an S2000 and a little birdie told us they might also have an LS FD RX-7 kit in the works that retains the stock front crossmember–we’re very interested to see how that will work!  SIKKY  also make headers for those LS swap kits, suspension components, turbo kits and a lot of other stuff you can check out on their website.

Sikky manufactures all their products in the USA with state of the art machinery.  Inside their HAAS vertical machining center our shifter is born!

Our shifter was hand delivered to us at last year’s SEMA show in Las Vegas and it was nothing short of a piece of art!  It’s a shame this beauty will be covered up by a ratty 20 year old leather shift boot!

Matt Powers was so enamored by it at SEMA he gave it his signature of approval!

That beefy lever arm ain’t gonna bend much, ensuring precise slop-free shifts of our T-56 Magnum!

Apart from the obvious rigid build quality of SIKKY’s shifter we were impressed by its remote ratio design that maintains the proper pivot geometry just as if the shifter were directly over the shifter cup while also shortening the throw.  You can imagine the long throw and inevitable slop we’d have had if we used only a custom offset shift arm to get our shift handle in the proper location.

The view from the transmission tunnel. Unlike its cousin for the standard T-56 transmission, our Sikky shifter had to come straight off the top of the mounting surface to avoid the casting that supports the end of the shift rail.  Sikky’s shifter for the standard T-56 dips down after the mounting surface which may require a little less shift effort.

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*
*