Why does it have to be so hard?

Maybe I’m referring to the tcase shifter shaft…

Sometimes all the things you try just don’t wanna work.

A little bit off — Five Finger Death Punch

Don’t stop believing — Journey

I’ve fit the donor truck transfer case in place.

I’ve modified it to have a slip yoke eliminator on the front (which is necessary as it’s changing from joining to IFS to a solid axle in the front).

Unfortunately, I can’t use the electric t-case shifter as it will interfere with the yoke that’s now on the transfer case. Why is that tough? Can’t I just build a little structure and make a manual shifter?

That’s what I thought anyway. Heck, here’s a mock up with a stepped shift lever!

Well, the shaft for the shifter has 2 flats so we can use that. It does not have any accommodation for a retainer (like an e-clip… a.k.a. “Oh Jesus” clip). There are 3 bolts that held the electric shifter on. There are 3 threaded holes in the case for those bolts to attach to.

Unfortunately, the only sufficient swing space for the shifter would swing through one of those bolts. (Hence the step in the mocked up shift lever).

2 bolts don’t make for a good connection. I could make a plate of steel that uses the 3 bolt holes (the bolts are too long though… but that’s solvable) but I need to NOT intersect with one of the bolt holes.

I cut out the bolt-on plate and took a run at cutting/bending the stepped arm. I found out a few things.

• One plate against the transfer case isn’t enough to retain the shifter arm.
• If there is any deflection in the arm then the stepped shift lever is likely to run into the turning yoke coming out the front of the case.
• Even if I could get the stepped arm to work, there’s no obvious way to retain the arm on the shift shaft.

So, for my next trick:

• I’m thinking that instead of a steel plate against the t-case, I’ll use a Delrin plate cut to shape against the t-case and counter-sink the swing-through-hole (and use a flat head bolt that’s flush or a little shy of the surface). If I get worried about heat or some sort of weird wear from vibration maybe I’ll put some sheet steel behind the Delrin.
• I’m also thinking to go with a straight shift lever that rides the Delrin. I don’t plan to shift this 10,000 … in my lifetime … so the Delrin should outlive my use.
• To retain the lever, I don’t think I have a drill bit that can drill something as hard as the shaft is in order to use a pin. I’m thinking to cut a groove all the way around the (very hard steel) shift shaft coming out of the transfer case to allow for an e-clip. Grinding is done with abrasion and will be slow going but should be fine for even very hard steel. I can probably just use a dremel tool to get a super skinny slot. I think a machine shop would do it right but at $100/hr that’s a lot.

Delrin (Polyoxymethylene or POM, more commonly known as acetal) is a tough plastic with good friction properties and it’s stable dimensionally. It also tolerates most petroleum based fluids (like gear oil in the tcase, etc.) It is a little sensitive to heat (it goes up to about 180 degrees F before bad things happen). As long as it’s in a non-hot application it should be ok…right? WCGW? it’s possible the tcase could get that warm. If it does I’ll have to pursue something else.

Regardless of whether it’s the final solution or not, I can prototype with it for sure. (I might decide it needs to be some lubricated steel something something later).

After I figure all this out… then I still need to work out the shift linkage. Fortunately, I’ve done that kind of thing before.

Yep. Some days it’s that hard.

So, I’m back at bat on the t-case now…ready to take another swing at it… and only 4 weeks to get the Delrin… sheesh. Who broke the supply chain? So once it came in I marked out a template to cut out, drilled some holes… and made and arm to swing. Maybe maybe?

So… here it is ready to give it a go. I even nicely counter-sunk the new bolt so it wouldn’t hand up the shifting… fancy…

but…. not really enough room. OMFG… ok. Plan … uh… .am I up to plan D?

Maybe plan E… let’s go with F… plan F….

Soon it’ll be T for T-case.

Ok. Let’s start with the electric shifter, remove the motor and see if I can somehow attach a lever onto the thing that does the shifting in the electric shifter.

Here’s the (turns out no surprise it’s a) gear that is used to shift. Dry fitting the case without the motor on gives about 1/4″ clearance to the drive yoke… so maybe? It is a bit tight in there. I think if it’s really a problem then I can clearance it a bit.

The gear is held in place by 2 brass bushings. That’s pretty good. The case is aluminum… I can machine it some without making it flaky. Where the gear sits in the housing seems like I might be able to cut away some of the housing and fit a lever going in/out of it.

Let’s give plan E a try. Here is the “window” cut out of the aluminum housing. Based on some shifting and fiddling it looks like this is about the minimum window size.

Just to get a feel for what would need to happen. The shift lever needs to swing from here:

to here:

The slot is big enough for the 1/4″ plate thickness to slip through it. I think I will need to (substantially) narrow the fat end of the lever… and probably widen the “window”… but I don’t want to do that until I absolutely have to. The aluminum is weakening with every cut.

The new challenge is to attach the lever to this gear.

maybe braze it on? bolt it on? Abra-freakin-cadabera it on? From this point of view it looks like maybe keep a wider area to attach to the gear to make that connection strong, but narrow through the window? I’ll keep whittling away at it.

A bit of grinding later it looks more sensible:

So now I’m starting to become a believer, so I also put a slight bend in it for clearance and to allow it to sit flat on the gear.

I keep working on it, then I work on figuring out 1- what’s the swing to fully shift (and mark it on the case) and 2- how much material to remove.

Here were my sketchy marks on the casing…

I took 3-4 runs at getting the marking correct, so there are many more marks than cuts.

Pre-welding it seemed a bit sloppy still.

The only real upside if it all goes badly is that maybe I can make it into a beer opener?

Here is an unwelded test fit.

I have to be careful not to violate the laws of physics and go through the tcase.

There’s only about 1/4″ clearance on this. egads…

It turns out the gear is oil impregnated steel. After heating it to burn off the oil my neighbor-pro-welder was able to get a good tig weld in there. Looks good to me!

I did have to do just a little more clearancing but it’s looking good and shifting good! For getting it into the cab, I’ll do the shifting linkage for the transfer case and the transmission in one post later.