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Old 05-27-2011, 01:24 PM   #2 (permalink)
wstar
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Location: Houston, TX
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I opted to skip FI on my 7AT, at least for now. I might revisit that decision in another year or so.

There have been reports of failures from the overdrive gears' (5/6/7) valve bodies not being strong enough to handle a solid SC setup. A few people have successful FI+7AT setups so far, but it's hard to judge the meaning of that over the internet, you don't really know for sure how they're driving the car in terms of stress, and nobody knows the long term fallout yet. They say that using UpRev to increase the line pressure to reduce the shift times removes some of this stress, and that may be at least some of the difference between the setups that are surviving vs not. I'd definitely add a transmission fluid cooler, too.

There was talk of GTM doing some valve body upgrades to the 7AT to handle serious FI applications, but it may be several more months before they get this completed, and it's probably a pretty decent additional overhead in cost, build complexity, and wait times.

Both paths are viable, it's really a matter of weighing the evidence (search these forums for related threads) and your personal financial/driving/longevity/headache tradeoffs and preferences. The car is incredibly fun to drive and a good performer even without FI though. Just doing boltons and tuning can keep you happy for a long time to come, IMHO.
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