Paddle Shifters DIY

[daczone]

I'm starting a new thread here for folks that are interested in the mod. It is more of a hardware mod than forscan or anything else.

The idea: Put paddles on the steering wheel of the Ranger from a borrowed Explorer wheel and wire it up.

The Donner wheel will be from a 2019 Explorer with factory paddles. Connector C2428/C2429 will contain 4 wires at each switch. illumination (Yes there are + and - lights on these paddles), Ground, SST (Select Shift Transmission (DOWN or UP)) and SIGRTN (Signal Return). In all practical terms these are nothing more than switches.

These switches as mentioned have 4 wires to them and are connected to a 18 pin harness.

Here is the wheel:

and the wiring exposed:

4 pin connector to one of the paddles (unplugged so you can see the wiring and the socket)

4 torx screws and the whole assembly is out.

Paddles removed.

Save the back cover, you can use it for a template to cut the holes for the paddles. You can't reuse the back cover as the lower part of the wheel is different in the Ranger.

The paddle switches connect with 2 Torx screws into the plastic. The mounting hole are present on my 2020 Ranger.

Now on the RANGER:

The Paddles are going to be wired to the Selector Lever Assembly connected @ C3531 which is located at the back of the shifter in the console. This connecter is not easy to get to.

And here are the UP/DOWN signals that we need to get to.

So far pretty straight forward... Here is the complicated part. It appears the paddle function itself needs just 2 wires for each switch. We can grab the illumination from the existing switches at the wheel, as well as ground. And if you look at the diagram above, SigRTN is shared between the 2 paddles. So we just need to get 3 wires from the wheel to the connector in the console. All of the steering wheel wiring goes through something calls a clockspring. Which looks like this:

The steering shaft goes through it and it allows the wheel to rotate and keeps the wiring wound like a clock to wind and unwind as the wheel is turned. There are connectors at both the wheel side and the steering shaft side. The hope is that there are 3 unused wires there.

Looking at the clockspring connector:

At first glance you'd say YEP... There are actually 5 unused pins (1,2,3,6,16) but the big question is, do they go all the way through?

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[RCMUSTANG]

When I wired my heated steering wheel there are blanks and they run to the connector on the right side of the steering column from the clock spring. The biggest pain is finding the terminal pins to plug into the clock spring side of the harness. The steering column side is a common size you can find.

 

[Dr3wDrop]

DYI - Do Yourself It

 

[daczone]

DYI - Do Yourself It

LOL... and of course I can't edit the subject. So DYI it is.

 

[SDXLT]

Would it have been possible to simply use the Explorer wheel and assign what’s what in forscan?

perhaps the gen6 wheel will fit our gen5’s?

I know this isn’t helpful but I love asking questions.

and I’ll be following to see how it goes!

 

[RedlandRanger]

LOL... and of course I can't edit the subject. So DYI it is.

Fixed it for you.....

 

[daczone]

I've decided to go the wireless route and I have the circuit working 100%. Not wanting to mess with the clock spring in my truck, I found an interesting link to put paddles into a Dodge using a wireless circuit and Mercedes paddles. The circuits don't seem to be available anymore. BUT that circuit certainly looks like a ESP. So that got me thinking, a couple of ESP's would do the trick. So I am using a pair of ESP8266 12e and the ESP-NOW protocol which is a secure mac address locked to the sending unit. It boots in seconds and draws less than 50mA of power. My code is simple and has been bench tested at this point. It consists of a sender (installed in the steering wheel where the paddles are (Ford Explorer paddles) and a receiver which is installed in the console and attaches to 4 wires, power/ground/Upshift and Downshift at the shifter harness. The receiver has a pair of reed relays to electronically isolate the factory circuit and allow the factory button to work as stock. I want this to look like a finished product. So I am designing circuit boards for the 2 circuits. The ESP is the heart, but it will also need a buck converter for the voltage drop and resistors on the inputs. At the receiver there are the additional reed relays. I will of course print a slim 3d case to house the circuits in. These could be epoxy filled.

 

[Dr3wDrop]

I've decided to go the wireless route and I have the circuit working 100%. Not wanting to mess with the clock spring in my truck, I found an interesting link to put paddles into a Dodge using a wireless circuit and Mercedes paddles. The circuits don't seem to be available anymore. BUT that circuit certainly looks like a ESP. So that got me thinking, a couple of ESP's would do the trick. So I am using a pair of ESP8266 12e and the ESP-NOW protocol which is a secure mac address locked to the sending unit. It boots in seconds and draws less than 50mA of power. My code is simple and has been bench tested at this point. It consists of a sender (installed in the steering wheel where the paddles are (Ford Explorer paddles) and a receiver which is installed in the console and attaches to 4 wires, power/ground/Upshift and Downshift at the shifter harness. The receiver has a pair of reed relays to electronically isolate the factory circuit and allow the factory button to work as stock. I want this to look like a finished product. So I am designing circuit boards for the 2 circuits. The ESP is the heart, but it will also need a buck converter for the voltage drop and resistors on the inputs. At the receiver there are the additional reed relays. I will of course print a slim 3d case to house the circuits in. These could be epoxy filled.

Sounds fancy!

 

[daczone]

I created a nice little 3d case to hold the ESP8266, and a couple of mounting tabs to zip tie the units in place. These will be uploaded on Thingiverse.

 

[daczone]

Install day!
I mounted each controller in a little 3d printed case, so the next person or future me doesn't ask WTF is this...

I have tested it 100% on the bench. The circuit is for wirelessly sending the paddle shifters without hacking through the clock spring (The wires that go from the wheel to the truck).

Here are some pictures:
Red is the transmitter (Goes in the wheel) Black goes near the shifter.

Each unit contains a ESP8266, a BUCK (12v - 3.3v converter), a few diodes and resisters to the 2 inputs for UP and DN shifting. Pretty simple setup. Idle current is nearly nothing and response time is excellent. I programed a 500ms pulse when triggered.

Factory Ford Paddles from a 2019 Explorer, The + / - gets wired to the illum circuit. I confirmed before I started this the holes to mount the paddles do exist on my factory wheel.

The Receiver (Black Box) will connect to the shifter wires: (Pic from Ebay)

 

[daczone]

Poor mans Ranger Raptor? Maybe

Adding the missing Paddles:

Before... Notice the existing holes for the Paddles (2020 Ranger).

They are mounted and Steering wheel is back in. The TORX Nut holding the wheel on was super easy to remove. (The back plastic has to have holes cut for the paddles).

Looks like a lot of wires, But it's 2 for illumination each side and 2 for the switch. There are a couple of redundant wires. IE: 2 wires to 1 pin in the plug. I didn't want to trim anything until the end.
Steering wheel bolt is torqued to 30 ft lbs.

 

[daczone]

All back together... They look factory and light up with the rest of the components. My clock spring has 2 extra undocumented pins in it (Wiring Diagram doesn't show them) so it may be possible to go through the clock spring for the UP/DN function. But I like my solution. There was plenty of room side the wheel housing for my circuit. I just wrapped it in anti-rattle material and zip tied it in place.

Looks pretty factory:

Lights are on... but kind of hard to see the lighted + / - during the day.

 

[daczone]

I LOVE the paddles. I've had a week with them installed and they are awesome. I find myself using the S'urprise mode now. The only difficult part in the mod is getting to the shifter wires (see below). My console will have to come out at some point to attach the 3 shifter wires. I used some pins to piggy back off the connectors. Not the way I like things to be but it works perfectly. The mod is AWESOME!

 

[unhappyelf]

This looks cool, Im not sure I would have gone with a esp32 solution. I like the ingenuity for sure though.

 

[2020FX4]

This is AWESOME.

Nice work!!!

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