Gated Shifter for Porsche 915 Transmission

A friend of mine in the UK recently bought this strange device. It’s a gated shifter, built on top of the standard 915 housing from a 1974 to 1986 Porsche 911. I could only think of one guy that might have something to do with designing this, so I emailed Hayden at WEVO. Sure enough, it was one of his designs from the mid-1990s.

The average man in the street looking at the gated shifter would think it looks like a foolproof device that is bound to help the 915. Hayden says the opposite is true.

“We delivered about 20 of these in 1998/early 1999, at a prohibitive price,” he told me. “We used them on both stock 915’s and our XT-915, that has no synchros and allows for clutchless upshifts. Customers of the super fast-shifting XT-915 continued to encounter shifting problems that the gated shifter could not prevent.

“We re-visited the problem, and improved our understanding of how various shifting problems are related to the architecture of the 915. After more rigorous and private testing, the internal GateShift kit for the Porsche 915 transmission was released in late 1999 – replacing the gated shifter handpiece.

“There is no doubt our current WEVO solutions are developed to assist  drivers who are regularly shifting at full power, max RPM, full chassis twist and full red mist. We also have countless road car customers who enjoy the extra feel and protection that any single or combination of our products create – at any rpm. The WEVO shifter seen here is certainly a cosmetic accessory: nowadays most of the funtionality it has can be achieved with other aftermarket products at a tenth of the price.”

Hayden’s final note is prophetic. “The modern alternate is the Tall Boy,” he says (Tall Boy seen above). “Far superior to everything the early iteration of the now legendary WEVO shifter visually claims to accomplish, at a lower price than we were forced to retail the gated part for, over ten years ago.”

We’ll have the Tall Boy in stock in 2011: definitely something the classic Porsche world needs to look out for. What a fantastic product!

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