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Shep Problems.....

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VRP

10+ Year Contributor
127
1
Aug 22, 2011
Brooks, Georgia
I hate to ask this but anybody else having problems with Shep built transmissions...?

Now first off- we drag race our cars so I am not talking to you guys that cruize around..I am talking 7k and up shifting.

Shep has built three transmissions for me -1 Stage two and two Stage three trans. We currently run Competition Clutch Twin Discs clutches. I have sent shep 8k in buisness in the last 12 months....
Not one of his transmissions, either 1g or 2g configuration will shift into third on boost... Two seperate cars..Three seperate clutches
The complete clutch systems have been sruitinized to a tee, clutch, shifter, bushings, cables adjustment, fluid, slave -on all our cars here at our shop..

Trevor and Jon- though nice, keep throwing blame back on us or other supporting equipment..our fault, or adjustment issues....We have had greater success to date with stock transmissions.
Have they gotten so big now that its just a buisness...?
I have called TRE to no avail( phone or email) and now Jacks for some help....
Any thoughts....?
Vince Ponder
VRPRacing
 
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I've seen similar reports, I've owned TRE trannies and tehy're great, but for support, knowledge and biulding a good trans call Tim Zimmer (twicks69 on here) he runs TMZperformance and builds trannies.. he guided my broke ass through building my own that shifts perfect at 7k and above into third as well as into 2nd (havn'et pushed it far into third yet as that's how i seem to shred trannies with torque and i have stock 3/4 gears, hub, sliders ans such still)

Jacks took their time to even bother returning my call about 5 days later, never answered PM's when on the forum (guess becayuse it wasn't business hours) and then had another guy call me back that didn't eeven know my situation.. TRE who i've given over 4k to in one shot before simply replied to my very descriptive situation of needing parts only that i could "buy a complete trans" notto mention how hard he ius to get ahold of but he does do good work and i would say Tim is on par with Jon 100% as far as parts, treatments and manufacturing of things like 4 spider diffs and such.. you won't regret a zimmer trans :D
 
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I have a shep stg 4 sitting on the bench right now as we speak that is going in this weekend, I really hope I done have the same problems.
 
It sounds like a clutch drag issue to me. Have you performed a clutch drag test?

Jacks Transmissions LLC — Clutch Drag Kills Synchros!

We have done that to many times to count.. Our last Stage three made one drag pass...
It was a Brand New 2g Trans from Mitsubishi with stage three mod from Shep, New Twin Disc Competition Clutch, New Lightened steel flywheel, new Slave, new line from Master cylinder, New Throw out bearing and CC Steel fork new Pivot ball(1 washer shimmed) New fluid . New linkage bushings and a rebuilt shifter base.. It was pain stakingly adjusted, and tested for Hours before going to the track... Grinds in third at 7k RPMs... Syncros shot..

I dont want to diss on sheps work- but this is a joke...If the Mitsubishi Transmissions cannot handle this kind abuse with a $2500 upgrade , then let us know ahead of time... I could have already bought a dogbox and saved the cussing , stripped bolts and bloody knuckles taking these things in and out.
 
Time to get the tools to do it yourself and save you some $$. It sucks to shell out that kind of money for something that will break. Or, if you talk about how your a legit drag car and dont daily it, time to go auto for more consistency and less breaky.
 
I don't drag my car, but I do 7k shifts going to 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, with my Jacks 2.1 with 4 spider. No grinds, shifts like butter and the customer service to me was great. I always emailed or called when contacting them.
 
I have a DSM'er near me who is also tired of the Shep trans breaking. I believe he said he hasn't had one make it to 1k yet... He's very well respected in the DSM community and he wants to chime in and tell all of his horror stories that's his choice. This thread is crazy since we were talking about this exact same thing yesterday.
 
I have a DSM'er near me who is also tired of the Shep trans breaking. I believe he said he hasn't had one make it to 1k yet... He's very well respected in the DSM community and he wants to chime in and tell all of his horror stories that's his choice. This thread is crazy since we were talking about this exact same thing yesterday.

I know who you're talking about. I was there last fall when he blew up his last tranny before the dogbox. I wonder what's going on?
 
I'll just go ahead and chime in here.

Vince, when you say in boost it won’t go into gear that right there shows a problem. The trans doesn't care if it is at 0 boost or 50 psi. What does care is the clutch which under load can flex and bind on the input shaft and you cannot simulate this on a clutch free rev test. We have built the same trans with the same people and parts for several thousand trannies. If you are having the same problem over and over then there is a reason to believe there is another issue. I can't count how many hundred 8 and 9 sec passes I have personally run on a stage 4. The trannies will shift at 10k plus if the right clutch is used and it is doing its job.

I hear the comment my "Shep" trans keeps breaking. In reality it isn’t the Shep part of the trans. We are doing the BEST we can with the money customers are willing to spend. This means using many STOCK components. Stock gears , stock int shafts and so on. Are we to be held liable for the stock parts we are using to save customers money when used at 3 and 4 times the power they were designed for?

The answer is a production run for a full aftermarket synchro gearset but even at that they will not shift if the clutch isn’t working. The question is will there be a market and even a slim chance for a return on investment? Most likely not even close being that it would require a $150k plus investment for a production run of quality surface ground gears.

Due to the age of the car and the many variables that are out of our control we are seriously considering discontinuing the dsm builds.

John
 
Well said and please don't discontinue the Dsm line, though I do understand you'r frustration.
 
I have a DSM'er near me who is also tired of the Shep trans breaking. I believe he said he hasn't had one make it to 1k yet... He's very well respected in the DSM community and he wants to chime in and tell all of his horror stories that's his choice. This thread is crazy since we were talking about this exact same thing yesterday.

I know who you're talking about. I was there last fall when he blew up his last tranny before the dogbox. I wonder what's going on?


Gz.. I feel like I'm being talked about ??? I rarely read problem threads on here and this one caught my eye funny how things work sometimes ..


Anyways...yeah I've gone through 3 stage 4's and a TRE stage 2.5 all in just about 5000 miles total...

My problems however didnt relate to the OP's problems...My transmissions all shifted like a dream......... I usually had to let it all mesh for about 2-400 miles before they start shifting good though... so just normal shifting for a couple hundred miles then pound on them..

My problem with the transmissions was stripping gears.. ... I had a problem stripipng 4th .. I did it twice in under 2000 miles... Shep did go above and beyond and had a custom one off 4th gear made for me to test...(For the record I did not even pay for this gear) ... ..it took almost a year to get produced..and within 1000 more miles I stripped 3rd gear which killed that special 4th :-/ No good data came from that test at that point and it was a huge wasted effort...(and Shep's money)

... The TRE stage 2.5 blew the center diff on a launch (was still a 2 spider I believe) So it was a completely different failure..


I've said all along ... Ive came to the conclusion that a combination of a heavy ass car (All my cars are OVER weight..I never take weight out but do add heavy things like a JLW7 Subwoofer, or roll cage or or second battery..or all of the above ;-) LOL) ... but a heavy car and high torque kills these gears ...in every instance I was making 500-600 FT lb/Tq on a MUSTANG dyno...Thats BIG torque........ combine that with the fact that the stage 4 (all the stages really) Utlizes stock gears.. (in the stage 4 stock EVO3 3/4 gears which are in fact narrower (not proven weaker, but in my mind they have to be) Than a DSM's 3rd/4th gear (esipecially the 91-92 HD Gearset)

I did pay for the rem treatement once...and that didnt make things last any different in my case.....

There are guys out there with the same horror stories from Jacks and TRE and all the other guys ... .... It always seems to be heavy "street" cars with high torque/power..I'm sure its not the rebuilders fault that they are coming apart in my case at least...

If you want your transmission using stock syncronized gears to stay together...make less power...or lighten the car up big time... These transmissions will last forever in a drag car running 1/4 mile at a time... Theres much less heat and prolonged stress put on the gears at the drag strip than there is on the street...

Or from another perspective if you only did get 1000 miles out of it in a race car that is 4000 passes ... ... ...

As for yours not shifting...I'd have to assume things just havent bedded together yet or you have something misadjusted still...I cannot imagine any other reason why the transmissions arent shifting...Do you have stiff mounts and solid shifter bushings?? If things are sloppy it makes it very difficult to shift at high RPM ..


As for me...I paid dearly and bought a Shep Dogbox... I didnt like the streetability of it and ended up parting my entire car out because it wasnt a "Street car" anymore....and I dont live close enough to a track to have a real "racecar" .... I bought a 97 GSX Auto and am now going to venture into that territory...The Auto guys haven't really been hurting the transmissions nearly as bad as the 5 speed guys... Though there aren't nearly as many auto guys making the power..so I guess only time will tell..

I still bang gears in my EVO but its less powerful (For now) but I believe their gearsets are pretty stout... but I worry everyday about my T-Case LOL ... At least theres some aftermarket Ring&Pinions and other goodies for it when the time comes ;-)

Anyways Good luck I hope you can get the thing shifting properly!!
 
I've put over 10k on my Shep 4 and it's never grinded going into any gear. Granted, mines a 2g and probably not putting down as much power but I've got nothing but good things to say about it.

You wouldn't happen to be running stock or poly inserts on your front/rear roll stops would you?

I run a ACT Twin Disk, OEM Mitsu clutch hydraulics w/ a full SS line, CC billet shift fork, OEM TOB/pivot ball, and the recommended 50/50 Redline MT-90 and Lightweight in the trans and have changed it once and it looked great. At the track I wrap it to 7.5k and have NLTS set at 6k and the trans shifts so smoothly I don't even have to think about hitting the next gear.


Sheps done nothing but help our community since DSM's started rolling off the factory floor. I'd like to see him continue to make tranny's for our cars for another 20+ years but he needs to put food on the table too, don't bash him (or call him out) for moving to a corner of the tuner market where the money's at.

:dsm:
 
I had a stage 4, Making mid 600s on a act 2900 with a 4puck and it shifted just fine at 8500+.

With my new build i put a QM GDriven Twin and it shifted like butter at 9K didn't matter how fast i tried to shift it so it sounds like you have an issue.

I did however run into the next big problem, My car is semi light and i shredded 4th making 750 on the 6-8th pass on the tranny with this setup so i now have an auto:coy:

Way to much money to spend to shred gears.
 
Funny..

I did the rev test to my car at 10k rpms no tire movement what so ever, in any gear what so ever. BUT when I hit the track it would destroy 3rd gear syncro every time. 1 or 2 passes and it was gone.

Sounds like your situation.

After a talk with Shep when I took the transmission to his shop during the shootout I found that multiple issues could cause it. Wrong adjusted shifter cables / brackets, clutch, bad pedal ( YES even welded ones could possibly fail).

With new syncro's on the gears it still did not shift. Even after bleeding the clutch and adjustments at the track.

I blamed Shep! I took the thing apart and took the gears to him at the track. A key broke and shot between 3rd and 4th gear syncro locking them and burning them out.


I then found Tim Zimmerman and had him hook it up with new syncros at the track. I assembled it and back down the track. STILL WITH SHIFTING ISSUES.

That's two different builders tested on the same day!

I got it home and it turned out that my clutch was adjusted wrong and putting excess pressure on the clutch fingers". That caused the clutch to reengage the discs and floaters back together causing trans to still be under a slight load. This killed the snycros. I also found that the rear bolt on the trans was pulling threads out of the bell housing causing even more problems.



In the end I fixed the clutch issues. Rebuilt the gear stack using the same exact parts from both builders and the same shim specs. The trans shifts great at 9500 now.



Shifting issues is not the trans builders fault. You have a problem somewhere with the clutch setup.
 
Is it REALLY due to the age or is it due to the money that the other platform's such as the gtr is bringing?

Money has nothing to do with it but I will say I am glad the GTR platform came around , otherwise I would most likely have moved on. In reality the GTR allows us money to stay in business and still be able to offer the same pricing on dsm/evo products.
 
:hmm: These are my thoughts as well. But whatever brings home the bacon is ok with me.

It's both! The cheapness in the dsm community is sickening, and unfortunately the evo community seems to be heading down the same paths. I'd have to agree with Shep, first thing I think when I hear 3rd gear won't work, in multiple platforms, is not the transmission, it's something the user is doing wrong each time. Is it possible there's something wrong with the trans? Sure, but it's more then likely something else. As Shep stated, you're taking 20 year old parts and putting 3-4 times the stock power output through them and expecting it to perform flawlessly, good luck.
 
I had a stage 4, Making mid 600s on a act 2900 with a 4puck and it shifted just fine at 8500+.

With my new build i put a QM GDriven Twin and it shifted like butter at 9K didn't matter how fast i tried to shift it so it sounds like you have an issue.

I did however run into the next big problem, My car is semi light and i shredded 4th making 750 on the 6-8th pass on the tranny with this setup so i now have an auto:coy:

Way to much money to spend to shred gears.

4th is a known issue and as you see from Ricky's post I put in a considerable amount of time and effort trying to come up with a cost effective solution but in the end with electron beam welding and the cost of very high end gears we axed that idea.

If the gears are run cool and not put under repeated pulls they will last awhile (actually longer than any engineer thinks they should). Dyno and a ton of street back to back pulls will kill them in a short time.

Funny this comes up though. I was talking to some of my drag racing Honda buddies about when we used to race together the other day. The Hondas with the stock gears would not make a race. They would qualify on one box, swap in another for the first 2 rounds and for finals swap in another !!!
 
If the gears are run cool and not put under repeated pulls they will last awhile (actually longer than any engineer thinks they should). Dyno and a ton of street back to back pulls will kill them in a short time.

John...

Do you have any data from people running custom cooler setups or anything like that? Is there a proven cooler setup that would potentially prolong the life of the gear set?
 
4th is a known issue and as you see from Ricky's post I put in a considerable amount of time and effort trying to come up with a cost effective solution but in the end with electron beam welding and the cost of very high end gears we axed that idea.

If the gears are run cool and not put under repeated pulls they will last awhile (actually longer than any engineer thinks they should). Dyno and a ton of street back to back pulls will kill them in a short time.

Funny this comes up though. I was talking to some of my drag racing Honda buddies about when we used to race together the other day. The Hondas with the stock gears would not make a race. They would qualify on one box, swap in another for the first 2 rounds and for finals swap in another !!!




Gotcha, Its not your fault or anyone elses, Not even a design flaw its just 3x the power as stock LOL.

Ya sadly that's how mine popped, i drive on the street and did a couple back to back races and BOOM.

I just chimed in to say my tranny shifted flawless so his issue is elsewhere.
 
I'll just go ahead and chime in here.

Vince, when you say in boost it won’t go into gear that right there shows a problem. The trans doesn't care if it is at 0 boost or 50 psi. What does care is the clutch which under load can flex and bind on the input shaft and you cannot simulate this on a clutch free rev test. We have built the same trans with the same people and parts for several thousand trannies. If you are having the same problem over and over then there is a reason to believe there is another issue. I can't count how many hundred 8 and 9 sec passes I have personally run on a stage 4. The trannies will shift at 10k plus if the right clutch is used and it is doing its job.

I hear the comment my "Shep" trans keeps breaking. In reality it isn’t the Shep part of the trans. We are doing the BEST we can with the money customers are willing to spend. This means using many STOCK components. Stock gears , stock int shafts and so on. Are we to be held liable for the stock parts we are using to save customers money when used at 3 and 4 times the power they were designed for?

The answer is a production run for a full aftermarket synchro gearset but even at that they will not shift if the clutch isn’t working. The question is will there be a market and even a slim chance for a return on investment? Most likely not even close being that it would require a $150k plus investment for a production run of quality surface ground gears.

Due to the age of the car and the many variables that are out of our control we are seriously considering discontinuing the dsm builds.

John
Thanks for replying John
I am not sure what to say other than its been three transmissions with three differant clutches and its always third gear..Each step of the way following yours and Trevors advice... ACT2600..wrecked a stage 2- three races.. ?.. Competition Clutch HD 6 Puck took out a stage 3 ..? and now Competiton Clutch Twin Disc stage 3 makes one pass..
Dan at Competiton Clutch told me if you can prove to him it was his clutch , they would pay to have the Transmission fixed.
Frustrated yes...but think of it on my end.. Again..Short of me shipping you the car and pay you to set it up what do you suggest...? I am to deep into these Manuals to go dogbox..I am not buying a GTR. And I would pay to see a manual DSM turn 10k at 35lbs boost and go into third gear..
Vince
 
Thanks for replying John
I am not sure what to say other than its been three transmissions with three differant clutches and its always third gear..Each step of the way following yours and Trevors advice... ACT2600..wrecked a stage 2- three races.. ?.. Competition Clutch HD 6 Puck took out a stage 3 ..? and now Competiton Clutch Twin Disc stage 3 makes one pass..
Dan at Competiton Clutch told me if you can prove to him it was his clutch , they would pay to have the Transmission fixed.
Frustrated yes...but think of it on my end.. Again..Short of me shipping you the car and pay you to set it up what do you suggest...? I am to deep into these Manuals to go dogbox..I am not buying a GTR. And I would pay to see a manual DSM turn 10k at 35lbs boost and go into third gear..
Vince

I have no first hand experience w/ Competition clutch..but I do know they have the Cheapest Twin Disc on the market..I wonder if that means their quality is sub par?? (Not dinging them, just saying) ..

As mentioned before the Boost level has nothing to do with transmissions going into gears...

Also one mis shift can break syncro springs, and destroy syncros all together which will lock you out of the gear from then on out...so one mis-shift or improperly adjusted clutch can cause this...

Do you have solid motor mounts? Do you have solid shifter bushings? How about solid bushings in your shift cables... all of these things can cause issue.

Is your shift cables adjusted properly?. Are you using the correct shift bracket for your year/model car

There are a TON of guys that are/have been at 9-11K on a regular syncro transmission at 800+ Horespower..

You really should take the advice given to you... Its obvious that your car has something improperly setup and its not in the transmission at this point...

It really does only take one little thing improperly setup to cause a mis-shift and trash your syncros/hub and sliders in the transmission ...
 
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