Primetime, question on your paddles

Love that we can actually discuss the paddles here! If these come up on AZ it ends up disappearing within minutes.

First off I want to say that I LOVE your paddles. The feel and finish of them is perfect and since I put them on a few months back I’ve used the paddles vs the gear lever so much more.

The one issue I’ve been having is that due to the size of the paddles vs the stock ones, when I pull on the top or bottom portions of them to shift I sometimes get a cracking noise if I pull too hard. I believe what’s happening here is the torque on the stock paddles due to pulling from such a distance off the attachment point is causing something in the stock paddles to move in a way they weren’t designed. This causes the cracking noise. If I can pull them nice and easy I can feel the standard click and the next gear engages, but if I pull any harder I get the crack which doesn’t feel or sound very nice. Has anyone else noticed or brought up this issue?

Again, I know it has nothing to do with your paddles, just the weakness of the stock ones when torqued too much. I was just hoping there was some type of fix!

LOL! Thus the reason I no longer participate on AZ… Thanks for the nice words on the paddles… As for the issue I have not had any problem like you describe nor heard from others… I assume they are aligned right? The stock paddles have a contour to them so we had to contour ours so that they fit nice and don’t do what I think you are describing… When installed you shouldn’t see any tape and the edge of our paddles should be flush to the stock paddles… In the office otherwise I would take some pics and show you… I can send you some new tape also if you want to reapply them to see if that is the issue? Let me know and I still have your address as well… If we go this route just be very very careful taking them off as this is very strong tape and you almost have to work them off by wiggiling them back and forth to break the tape loose… Hope this helps!

maybe don’t torque the extreme edges of the paddle extension then? ;D

totally not-related…wonder if you guys can use the RS5 wheel? Or B8 Rs4?

Maybe the paddles (the stockers don’t really feel paddley…they’re tiny little flick switches really) on those wheels are a bit stronger?

Sak, good point… It doesn’t take much effort to activate them so I assumed he wasn’t yanking on them… I believe the stock paddles that come on the RS5 are the same as the B8S4 but I am not positive… going off my memory of pics I have seen… I guess someone could always spend $1,899 for the RS5 wheel + $69.90 for an S4 badge, from my buddy Alex, to test that theroy… It won’t be me though as I wouldn’t spend a penny with that whinner and thief… Based on pics they are the same paddles…

$800 all said and done haha http://www.audizine.com/classifieds/showproduct.php?product=69073&title=rs5-full-air-leather-steering-wheel-tiptronic&cat=122

I think he was saying that this creak or crack sound happens when he torques pretty hard on the very tip of the paddle…so it is not only a hard pull, but a levered pull at that. Probably causes the stock paddle to creak/crack a bit where it’s connected to the wheel.

where’s the flat bottomed one?

oh nevermind…that’s the old RS5 wheel. The refresh has the flat bottom.

Rich, Always nice when someone takes the hit for you… I am probably in the minority but my steering wheel works fine and wouldn’t even spend $800…

Saki, I’ll test tonight when I get home but I typically shift with the paddles and use the very bottom tip and haven’t had these sounds/issues… I’ll do whatever it takes to resolve it so I am not trying to make it go away but it would be nice if I could replicate… Maybe I’ll take mine off as well and see if there is damage to the stock paddles, but I don’t think there is… I have been wanting to switch to black anyway…

I think he said above it’s only when he pulls too hard

[quote]when I pull on the top or bottom portions of them to shift I sometimes get a cracking noise if I pull too hard.
[/quote]

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LOL! Nice… I’ll make sure to pull hard when I test… lol Just given you crap…

Yeah it’s only when I pull too hard, it doesn’t happen like 95% of the time. It’s just as saki described, since it’s a levered pull on the ends (W=F*d) it puts additional strain on the stock paddles underneath which leads to the cracking noise. I’ll see if I can get a video of it in the next few days. Gotta use my GoProHD for something :slight_smile:

I’m positive I put them on correctly btw. I read all the original posts and saw the mistakes people made (upside down with tape showing) and this isn’t the case. It’s just a case of a lot of force being applied at a distance causing torque on the original connection.

Appreciate the quick feedback on this!

Here you go I made a template for the next thread you want to start.

Shit, I must be confused!? I thought the point of message boards was for information sharing and Q/A on particular common interests but I must have been wrong!! Man I sure feel like a fool now! ::slight_smile:

I’ve been on this forum for 2 days and it’s already starting to feel like AZ. I guess the next step is you becoming a moderator so you can change thread titles or delete posts that aren’t to your liking regardless of whether they may be able to help someone out.

All I’m going to say is: I see what you’re doing here (i.e. starting a thread on this and not email or PM straight to Ron).

You won’t get any sympathy here either, if that’s what you are looking for I doubt you’ll find it here.

Nothing wrong with asking this publicly. He said right off the bat he loves the paddles, it’s a reasonable question.

A BIG reason most of us use this forum over AZ is to openly share information, be it good or bad, in a healthy and knowledgeable environment. We aren’t going to tear someone apart for asking questions. Granted the technical level of a lot of people on here is higher than AZ, so if you say something wrong you might get a hard time for it haha, but it’s all in good fun.

There won’t be any keyboard-warrior-vendor-suck-up moderators here, that I can guarantee :stuck_out_tongue:

Lol, the only reason I still go on AZ is because I lost the remote to my T.V. No joke.

yeah, I don’t think he’s trying to turn primetime’s paddle ‘business’ upside down jspazz. I think you just want to hate hokie, and that’s understandable as he may have fucked up pretty good on his original APR is the devil thread, but I don’t think this is really a big deal. He has mentioned that it’s the OEM part that’s the source of the ‘problem’ not the extensions.

In actual fact it’s his fervid pulling on the wrong spot of the paddle that is the problem. Pulling harder doesn’t make you shift any faster, just as swiging a hammer faster doesn’t make it any easier to drive a nail straight in.

Yup, you see what I’m doing, asking a question to see if any others have encountered the same thing. Man, don’t know how I thought I’d sneak that one by you. You’re a sharp one!

Don’t know why or what you think I’d be looking for sympathy for? I bought a product from Primetime, I love said product and enjoy using it every single day, and I now have a question on said product. My choices were to either e-mail him directly, where whatever knowledge is gained between the two of us can’t be shared, post it on AZ and have it removed within minutes, or post it up here, where Primetime also posts so he can not only help me, but potentially others that may have encountered this.

Just don’t see what your issue is?

I’ll cease and desist, for now, but to me, this is the equivalent of Audi2.0T to Saki, lol.

Agree with you on this one. Some people agreed with me on the APR thread but some HEAVILY disagreed and believe it’s fair to condemn any future question I may have on the fact that I had an argument with a vendor. Since I didn’t agree with APR I must have an issue with EVERYONE now, right!

And you’re right, I’m definitely pulling the paddles too hard when I get the cracking noise, it just happens sometime in the heat of the moment :slight_smile: I was just a bit worried about what this was doing to the original weak ass paddle underneath! Oh, and while that nail may not be easier to drive, it sure happens faster the harder you hit it :wink:

I’ll still post up the vid of what I’m experiencing so you guys know what I’m talking about.

don’t make me dig up auditurd’s history…you’ll realise just how inappropriate that comparison is lol. Kid is forum cancer.

One story that always makes me laugh is how he would always post that his B7 A4 with a big turbo would KILL any B6/B7 S4 yada yada. He would troll the B6/7 S4 forums every 5 minutes about this. So 91GL laid down a challenge back when he was just a tune/exhaust B6 S4. He said something to the effect of:

‘auditude if you really think you’re faster than a B6, come to waterfest and we’ll have a race from a dig. If I lose to you, I will lick the soot off your tailpipes’.

This was after months of auditude trolling and failing to dyno or go to the dragstrip or basically do anything that would prove his big claims. Of course he never did any of those things, including hiding from 91GL whenever possible.

It was a great callout, and of course he didn’t stand up to it.