Good-morning! Has anybody tuned their ZF8 Gearbox yet? With my old M4 I was able to tune my DCT to gain noticeable acceleration improvements not to mention the improvements on the Fly.. I also tuned my 7G-tronic on my CLK Black Series and got great gains.

The ZF8 is one of the most common sports car Autos so I'm assuming there must be some tuning company out there? Thanks!

 

check out JF Automotive they offer gearbox remaps on the zf8

 

Stay far away from those little boxes of junk.

 

Its also the best out of the box gearbox on the planet, and already quite well tuned compared to some other brands who use it. I wouldn't expect to see any gains; this isn't a dual clutch, its not going to get much faster than 200 ms.

 

My thoughts too.......and even if there were gains, they would be infinitesimally small. Given how small the F type aftermarket is already, I cannot imagine anyone bothering to offer such a thing. If you really want to make a difference call VAP and get an engine tune.....at least you will get a real and noticeable increase.


2 cents,
Dave

 

Why "tune" it?

 

I've been looking for a TCU tune for our cars for awhile. No luck so far.

I think the new db11 or vantage will use a version of our gearbox? Maybe by then someone will offer something.

I think a lot of Maseraties and BMW models use the zf8 as well it is strange nothing is on the market for it.

 

It's been on the vantage since 2015.

 

The ZF 8HP series is used by 15+ brands. The problem is it is basically optimized already; you're not going to gain anything here.

 

yep i wouldn't touch it

the jag specific tuning of the zf8 is the best i've driven yet, and by some margin.....and this includes bmw's tuning of it in the 135/140 and new audi s4/5

 

Agreed, my observations driving my F Type R suggest seriously good optimisation.

It won't change gear automatically if mid corner, brake suddenly in higher gears and it will rapidly downshift.

Lots of throttle even in drive will hold lower gears until higher revs as will most autos, clever part is after a period of "spirited" driving it will still hold at high revs in lower gears even at smaller throttle opening until a certain time period has elapsed and it "knows" you're driving more slowly.

One professional reviewer raved sbout how good the auto box was, it does seem to have an uncanny knack of being in the right gear most of the time.

My only minor gripe is even in sport mode it will start from second unless you manually select first gear with stick or paddle.

 

With that much power why start in first unless it is a specific need? Probably slower with the gear change anyways... But the pops and burbles from first gear are second to none!!!

 

You mean 2015 Vanquish came with the ZF 8-speed, same goes for the 2015 Rapide..
The newer era Vantage line-up never had the ZF(2006 to present), only came with the Graziano 6 and 7 speeds(in either ASM or manual shift configurations).

 

A lot of the high gear numbers trans don't require 1st gear unless at a dead stop. Usually any auto trans doesn't use 1st gear unless stopped, but even the manual trans dsg or single clutch types that are 7+ gears don't use 1st gear because it gets to jerky/hesitant when trying to engage the gear from a slow speed.

We've thought about getting into ZF auto trans tuning, but like most have said..it works well out the box, there's no real improvement to be made unless you've maxed out the limiters. It's just ZF's limiters are usually there because the internals can't handle more. The SVR is pretty much maxing out the limits of what the engineers quoted for the ZF 8HP70 to handle (700Nm). Years have proven that ZF's quotes are little underrated so a little more is expected. What I don't know about, is if Jag actually beefed up the 8HP70 to handle a lot more power than quoted. If that was the case, might of just been cheaper to use the 8HP90 versus 1-off custom parts to make the 8HP70 stronger.

 

My bet would be that they have not. Historically, ZF has not allowed the OEMs make any changes to their 8 speed box; even the gear ratios aren't adjustable. Kind of a "you can have what we say you can have" situation. To my knowledge, FCA is the only company to have a modified version and that's only because we have our own plant.

 

Tune would be helpful for those of us with a VAP ECU tune with the increased rev limiter.

Otherwise, we have to shift in manual + sport mode to reach 7,000 rpm. Was experimenting with this the other day and all other modes still shift at 6,500.

 

Is the AT controlled by the same processor as the engine? If so, I suspect VAP can make that change for you.

 

Nope, trans has it's own ecu (TCU), it's also part of the valve body inside the transmission.

We're working on a solution to flashing the TCU, most places require an actual already programmed TCU in hand, to develop a flashing tool. It's not an overnight thing so this "donor" car would be without the TCU for few months...needless to say, not everyone is jumping at the fact.

 

From my self-testing, the car indeed starts in 1st gear from a dead stop. This is in regular D and in Sport (Dynamic on or off).

The only time it starts in 2nd is when you are in manual mode. In reality, this frustrates me a lot. In manual mode, it should still start in 1st, not 2nd. Don't really get the logic with that.

I've done about a good 30-45 minute of testing (because the car has no gear indicator when in one of the auto modes) and it indeed starts in 1st gear, everytime.

 

If that is correct, your gearbox works very different from mine. In D (no matter what mode) it will start in 2. gear.

In manual (using the gear shift pedals), it will start in 1. or 2. by my choice OR it will start in 2. if I let it downshift automatically when coming to a full stop.