The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop Will it hold up? Welding a custom shifter for my T5.

Stovebolters,
First the question.
Will this weld repair on the shifter tip hold up or will it eventually fail? I cut a damaged lower ball tip from a short throw shifter and welded on a good one.
I used a MIG welder and I did my best.
I have another short throw shifter with a good ball on the end and I can simply copy this project without the repair of the lower ball if you think what I did will fail.

I need honesty from you guys. It's great to belong to a forum like this where I can ask for advice and opinions.

I am a novice welder and today I tried something new. It was a fun project and it came out much better than I could have imagined. Here's a LINK to the entire project with 18 photos. The shift position is PERFECT.

Let me know if I should ditch the repaired shifter or if you think it will last.
Jay

Great job with the presentation. I think your weld will work fine. My shifter in SM420 broke clean about 6" off the floor and I welded it back together with an alignment adjustment so it wouldn't hit the dash anymore. I did it just like you did the ball repair. It has worked fine for five years and still going strong.

Just curious, why not weld the connection too and forget the bolt together idea? Then it would look like it should.

You should be good to go! Nice installation.

I typically try for a full penetration weld to ensure the weld is stronger than the base metal but in this case it probably isn't necessary.

My experience with the S10 transmissions is they shift easy, therefore the strain on the parts shouldn't be very high at all.

FWIW: I put a custom shifter in an '85 S-10, basically a Hurst stick on the stock T5, bolted it to the stub coming up out of the trans., and it held up for over 100,000 miles.

Let me suggest you take the project one step further. The ball end of the shifter is hardened to resist wear, and welding in that area has probably annealed (softened) it. It's going to wear pretty quickly. There's a casehardening product called "Kasenit" that is used to surface-harden parts like the flintlock rifle frizzen that the flint strikes to fire the priming charge. If you have access to an acetylene torch I can send you a small quantity of the hardening powder (I buy it by the pound) and you can re-harden the ball so you won't have to make another shifter pretty soon. If you can scratch the area around the ball with a file, it's going to be too soft to last very long.
Jerry

The 85 S10 had a standard shifter and was not a short throw. Since the short throw version has a pivot pin that's further away from the ball tip, that means the little ball sees more stress from leverage. That doesn't mean that my repair is doomed to fail, but is does factor into the equation.

Basically, I think if it shifts like butter when I finally give it a test drive, then I'll go with it. I have my spare short throw shifter as back up. I sure would hate to have it fail while I'm on the road.


Jerry, thanks for the offer to help harden the parts but if I get too nervous I'll just cut up my other short throw shifter and call it a day. The ball end sits inside a plastic cup in the shifter box, so I doubt the ball end will wear very quicky. Time will tell.

OK- - - -if you decide to go with the hardening, let me know. No sense spending a bunch of money on Kasenit when I can spare a little!
Jerry

So I'd need an acetylene torch? What do I do with that and the powder? Sounds dangerous, so I'm in!

Lug, I have a question about if there is any clearance issues in the area of where you welded the new ball end on? I realize that you already cleaned up the weld (and it looks nice, BTW), but if there were no clearance issues, you could have skipped the cleanup of the protruding bead, leaving more meat for more strength. Not picking at you, just thinking about the next one that someone might need to do.
Carl

The hardening process is pretty simple- - - -Heat the part until it's just barely red, roll it around in the powder to coat it pretty well, and heat again until the powder melts and flows evenly. Keep the heat going for a minute or two, but don't get the metal hot enough to melt it or change its shape. After about 2 minutes of moderate heating, quench the part in icewater. Clean up any residue, and do whatever polishing you choose to get a good surface finish. The part will have a hard surface several thousandths thick, but the center will still be tough and flexible, not brittle. The powder is basically carbon, which bonds to the surface of the metal and case-hardens it.
Jerry

Well that's why you are the T-5 guru and I am merely the guy who gives flash burn to everyone else in the shop.
Carl

Mr. Jay,
I agree with Jerry, you do need to harden your shift shaft. Not just the ball area but the end that will be bolted to your shifter lever. I have a Hurst shifter but I modified the original shifter lever to be fit the shifter. It looked like yours. As I shifted from left to right/right to left, I could feel it give way slightly to it felt like a bend. The shifter lever wasn't hardened so it was going to eventually snap. I had the shifter lever redone/shortened, reinforced, and hardened. It is good to go now.
Your shifter set up is the opposite of mine, to where you modified your shifter at the ball and lever connection. The metal is weak on both ends.

Just my 2 Abe Lincolns,
Bread
.

Sorry to hear bud.....working with metal and heat treating can be a long process...keep at it!

No worries. I have a solid one. That repair of the ball on the end was doomed to fail. Today I'll make the same modification with one that isn't broken. I'll post pics of the finished product.

If you use Argon/C02 gas with your 220v mig welder on 'real hot' setting, it should have worked just fine. I weld hardened steel 1-3/8" ball bearings to a grade 8 bolt for one of my shop solutions and none of them have failed yet. You can always pre-heat before welding to give it a little more depth.

Very nice. Most of these solutions are difficult because of the longer throw. Thanks for sharing that information.