Regardless of how technologically advanced it sounds, at the end of the day it's still an automatic tranny. Go drive a DSG from Audi/VW. It's an auto. You put it in Drive and hit the gas and it shifts for you. The very essence of any auto tranny. Or you can put it in "shift" mode and you have to tap the paddle shifters. Which isn't all that different than current sport-shift autos that you can get in just about every car these days. This one is more advanced and shifts a hell of a lot faster...that's the only difference/advantage to the dual-clutch design. But, that doesn't cover the fact that it is an auto.

 

That's not the only advantage. A torque converter automatic has more power loss through the drivetrain. A dual clutch design will generally be on par with a standard tranny regarding drivetrain loss.

 

Good point about drivetrain loss. Thanks for mentioning

Let's see how much power this thing can handle once Buschur and AMS get a hold of it. Wonder if they will even give it a try? Or if they'll see it as too much of a PITA?

 

I'm sure they'll try. That's just the nature of the business. I'm sure the tranny can handle a pretty decent amount of power. It's the tuning that will be the PITA. This won't be a deal breaker for me though. If I do end up getting the MR I would not modify anything power wise while I'm still under warranty. Too risky since the SST is so new. Hopefully 3-4 years down the road tuners will have overcome the hurdles that comes along with modding a SST car.

 

Here's a great quote from CharlesJ (the guy who runs this forum). This is from a thread where some crazy dude wanted to put the SST in his IX.

Like many of us have been saying, don't plan on modding the SST because it's not going to be easy and now looks like it really won't be possible. I don't see many tuners even wanting to touch the SST after hearing this...

 

That's too extreme, today's cars all have adaptive ECU and TCM's. The HP your cars will dyno is gonna vary (sometimes greatly) day by day depending on if you drove it a week stuck in traffic vs. a week at the track; as it will adjust air/fuel mappings (to manufacturer's specs) and shift points.

I think people are getting way too worked up about the SST and whether it can endure some mods. I personally think it can and will easily adapt to different HP numbers and you can bet your 40K that mitsu engineers programmed algorithms to let it adjust shift points in full auto depending on the amount of power it sees. I don't think the SST could even function without that kind of flexibility.

Think of it like this, if you have a manual you are still going to have to flash your ECU as soon as you mod anything anyway. If you get an intake and don't tune you lose power b/c all the sudden your ECU sees way more airflow than it should, so it over corrects and goes into failsafe measures. Or if you bolt on some crazy 3" turboback exhaust your car automatically loses 20 lbs of torque because it lost all the backpressure the ECU expects. But the ECU is the one talking to the TCM/SST so that is also affected. So many variables control how a modern car shifts, there is no set shift point!

 

Sorry FLK...it's not too extreme. If you read Charles post you'll see that he got his information directly from Mitsubishi. Don't believe him if you don't want to, but I would say that the guy who runs this forum is a pretty reliable source of information. And, him getting the information directly from Mitsubishi seems pretty reliable as well.

If you think it will be easy to mod an SST-equipped car, go browse some of the Audi and VW forums and see how easy it is for those guys to mod their DSG-equipped car. SST and DSG are essentially identical. SST modding will NOT be easy and may not be worth the headache.

 

It seems you took my post out of context, I never said the SST was easy to mod. In fact I would not personally mod the car or SST at all. All I said was to challenge the "extremeness" of Charles saying if you put an intake on the car the SST will shutdown or go into failsafe. If anything, it's the ECU that would overcorrect and use corrective measures rather than the SST.

I can further elaborate: If you install an intake or exhaust, you automatically LOSE Hp and torque without tuning the ECU. Your ECU corrects and goes failsafe. Same way a computer would throttle down or reboot when it overheats or detects something wrong.
This is a built-in function. And since this function is inherently programmed, the SST, if affected, has to adjust to new ECU commands. Therefore you have to infer that the SST is adaptive/flexible in terms of power handling. Almost all modern cars have adaptive TCM's. How much flexibility offered by software is the $40K question. This does NOT address the hardware limitation which is a totally different topic i'm not touching.

I hope my logic makes sense.

 

FLK...I'm picking up what you're putting down

 

Having pre-ordered the SST from my dealer, I was somewhat concerned about the possibility that the SST gearbox would completely reject any mods (even exhaust etc.)... so I did trawl through a few VW forums. No one's saying it is easy to mod a car with DSG/SST, but it looks like there are plenty of modding (ECU etc.) options for the VW Golf DSG.

Examples:
http://www.morego.co.uk/road_tests_item.php?road-test=2
http://www.autocult.com.au/NewsDetail.aspx?id=811

Ok, maybe 252hp is not a monster increase in HP, but stock for the GTI is only 200HP, so it's still pretty significant. And the cost of the mods are not excessive, IMHO.

I'm only looking for mild/moderate mods for my SST, and really hope that someone figures out how to do so...

 

I don't think I buy that. Besides, you can always run a standalone.

 

Speculation, speculation, speculation... We should really wait until the car actually makes it here and the tuners start looking at it before we start whining.

 

Unfounded speculation, scare tactic, be afraid of what you don't understand.

People said the same thing about fuel injection. Now we can't go without it.

The home market aftermarket *will* figure it out, as they always have in the past. Thats the nature of the Japanese aftermarket. If over here some choose to be ignorant cavemen, then you're in the wrong car. A solid-axle Mustang would be appropriate...

 

+1

 

Please stop it with the "speculation" BS. These are real FACTS about the SST not being easy to modify. If you didn't read it correctly, that information came from two very reliable resources.

1) CharlesJ is the guy who runs this site.
2) CharlesJ got his information directly from Mitsubishi.

Argue with it all you want, but that doesn't change the fact taht the information came directly from Mitsubishi through someone who has no reason to lie to the community he runs.

You guys posting that the SST can be modified easily are merely speculating. You have no facts to back that up. You're hoping and wishing for it to be true. If you don't believe either of those two sources, please post a source that provides a counter argument with real facts that it can be modified.

In the end, I think we all know some tuner will figure something out that will work for the SST-equipped cars. But, at what cost? The best Audi/VW DSG solution costs in excess of $7,000. Will you be willing to spend that much or more?