So one of the things that has bothered me since I started driving this conglomeration of wayward parts is the location of the shifter knob in all three axis. There are a few contributors to the situation. One big one is the location of the shift tower where it comes through the floor. This was dictated to me by the placement of the motor itself and the fact that the shifter tower is integral to the transmission and not movable. To give some perspective on the situation, the shifter comes through a hole in the floor located right beside the factory hole for the transfer case shifter. Yes, that far back. Now, when I initially built the truck I bought a brand new shifter tower from GM and installed it. The shifter placement was great--if you were shifting from the back seat. Under the rubber sealing boot that comes on the tower assembly there are some screws that allow disassembly of the tower mechanism. I pulled the steel shifter stub out of the plastic base and heated it up and bent it into a much more agreeable position. This was a great improvement over the initial location, but after many thousands of miles, it has proven to be less than comfortable at times. Another situation exacerbated by the shifter location is the length of the stick itself. It ends up being too long to be comfortable, but too short to be cool. Something needs to be done to improve the physical properties of the shifter. The factory shifter is a combination of a solid stub at the top for a knob to thread onto, followed by a varying diameter tubing down to the bottom where a rubber isolator mates the shifter tube to a threaded insert which threads onto the shifter stub on the transmission. There is no easy way to do much of anything to this shifter except destroy it. Nothing productive will come from that, so another plan will need to be devised.
Now for something seemingly completely unrelated. When I installed the ARB locker in the rear I had done some research and found that the electro-pneumatic solenoid valves that control the flow of actuating air to the lockers were a "fairly" common point of failure. I quote fairly because while they are a quality piece, I did find several posts dealing with bad actuators and many people carry spare valves. I really didn't want to deal with all that crap. Why deal with an electrical switch sending power to a electro-pneumatic valve to send air down a plastic line to the locker when I deal with pneumatic valves in various configurations literally dozens of times in a day?? I'm not trying to win a beauty contest with this thing, so not much to worry about there. Let's go with something robust and simple. Big dumb parts--my favorite kind.
I decided to go with a parking brake valve from an air brake setup. Nothing fancy, just a simple on-off valve. I mounted it in the floor right next to the driver seat, right behind my big, dumb auxiliary battery disconnect switch:
It worked great. Out of the way, yet still accessible. Good stuff. That is, until, we were coming down a steep trail (<cough>cowpath/<cough>) and I had to do a multi-point turn to get down this switchback and needed a rear locker to keep from spinning the rear tires. If I went a little forward when I was trying to go backward, VERY bad things were going to happen immediately. So in the heat of the situation, I reach down to engage the rear locker and some stuff had slid forward and blocked access to the switch. Not good. I cleared the stuff out, hit the switch and locked the rear axle. This situation got me to thinking about my setup. I like it. It is functional 95% of the time, but that is the hang up. What to do?? Move the switch?? Go back to the electro-pneumatic setup??
So, back to the shifter situation. I decided the time had come to deal with the uncomfortable setup that I had. I knew I couldn't do anything with the stock stick, so a replacement would have to be sourced. I decided to take care of a couple problems at once with the shifter. I started by pulling the stub out of the base and doing some more strategic bending on it. It seems so simple. Bend it until it is in the right place, but what is the right place?? I thought I had it right when I did it the first time way back when. This proved to be a fairly challenging task requiring a few re-bends to get it "right". I eventually got it where I thought it should be. Now to add a stick to it. I was at the steel yard and picked up a piece of 1" .250 wall DOM tubing. Not having measured the length of anything I grabbed two feet to be safe. I had my buddy Russ bore the end of the tube and machine the threads into it. That worked out perfectly. I now had a two foot long stick in about the right place.
Now, what to do for a knob. I use a shift knob with a pneumatic valve in it hundreds of times a day. I have never had a failure with it. This is my kind of part. So I picked up an Eaton/Fuller A6909 shift knob. It has a pneumatic valve in the knob assembly that I can use for the rear locker.
My boy saw this and said I should leave it like that so it can be one of those "cool hotrods". I told him that I'm just not that cool and have to have something slightly more practical. Overall length. Oof. There's another fun task. I made a starting cut and I think I cut an inch off this thing three times and half an inch off of it another three times until I got to what felt "right".
Now that pic is slightly deceiving because the Eaton shift knob is fairly tall making the overall height of the new shifter closer to the length of the old shifter than it looks--still shorter than the original though. Now it is fairly obvious that the outside diameter of the new shifter is a lot smaller than the OD of the old shifter. I want to reuse the stock shift boot, so something will need to be made to deal with this discrepancy. I found a drop from my tie rod that Russ had machined for me. I took that back over to his shop and had him bore it out to fit the new stick and also cut a groove in the bushing to retain the top of the stock boot. This is what I received:
The shift knob mounts with 1/2-13 threads, so I cut the head off of a 1/2-13 bolt and installed it in the tube with a set screw. I retained the shift boot collar in the same fashion. This is what I ended up with:
After some plumbing and wiring for a possible future project, this is what I ended up with:
A different angle:
So, a lot of damn work for a shifter and ARB switch. Yep, sure was. Worth it?? Oh hell yes. Very much so. Much more comfortable position on highway and, almost more importantly, off highway. I find myself more likely to flip the rear locker on being that it is easily accessible now. One thing that I anticipated and was not let down with was the amount of noise the stick transmits. Remember the rubber isolator in the original stick mentioned earlier?? That is for noise abatement from the transmission. The stock stick does a nice job of dampening the vibration and not transmitting the noise to the interior. The new stick has no noise dampening properties at all. I thought this would be a big problem, but come to find out, it is really only an issue at certain ground speeds, under certain loads, so unless those criteria are met, no noticeable noise enters the vehicle. Win.