KMS Racing

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The Pectel GCU is capable of controlling pneumatic, electric or hydraulic gearshifts. Extremely reliable electronics with highly developed software strategies that focus on safety, performance and longevity of gearbox parts. It has been demonstrated in numerous professional applications to deliver fast, reliable and repeatable shifts.

Used with the Shifttec pneumatic hardware the results attained have been up-shift speeds of 36ms and a down-shift speed of 62ms. Cycle time for each shift is a maximum of 130ms allowing over 8 shifts per second.

The Pectel GCU also provides over rev protection and automatic gear ratio learning, which are crucial in maintaining maximum engine life and can remove the need for any track configuration by a race team.

All of the gearshift strategies included with the Pectel controller have been designed with safety of paramount importance. Each strategy has been reviewed by multiple engineers to ensure that all aspects of the safety case have been considered. For example, it is possible to enable a software lock such that the system will not move from neutral to first without the clutch being depressed.

The gearshift strategies provided by the unit have proven extremely reliable in a range of series, there have been no car stopping incidents and no software bugs found throughout the Champ Car, Superleague Formula, or Le Mans Series.

Some key strategies include:

• Via the map select switch on the steering wheel, the system can be put into "Manual" mode allowing direct control of the actuators from the paddles, effectively a "Limp Home" mode.
• A number of strategies to prevent abuse of the shift system, for example if system temperature exceeds a map set threshold the system will refuse to shift.