Material Suggestions for Shift Knob

[Winegrower]

How about an aircraft grip type handle?

 

[KyleG]

CF piston pins

Who the heck thought that was a good idea?? (I don't mean to poke fun, sorry if it was you) Are carbon fiber pins a thing?

If you want to go the red direction, phenolic rod would be about the right color. Red rhulon is too, but that's mega expensive.

If you want to pizazz up a black delrin knob, you could stack in some red discs or cut grooves and add red o rings.

-Kyle


Sent from my Lenovo YT-X703F using Tapatalk

 

[tjb]

Don't know about red Delrin, but black Delrin machines nicely. I've turned several parts with it, and the finish is fine. Here are a couple of examples.

I made this John Deere music box/night light for my new grandson, and the tires are turned from Delrin:


I also made these split bushings for a grain augur. They operate under a pretty good bit of pressure and have held up fine:


Delrin is easy to machine, and it should be very durable for an application such as you've described.

Regards,
Terry

 

[mmcmdl]

I had a few bullet grips in the past . Cool when you're 16 YO .

 

[matthewsx]

I have some bronze rod that I could give you a chunk of.

 

[Shootymacshootface]

Stainless steel sanded very smooth, then lightly bead blasted.

 

[mattthemuppet2]

carbon fiber is by all accounts very dangerous to machine, due to all the short airborne fibers it generates. Full respirator, vacuum and hepa filter territory.

I don't think you'd like the feel of delrin, it's very slippery. If you want modern then alu or stainless, with maybe brass accent rings. Here's a pistol grip style shifter I made for a friend's '56 F100.



made the shifter rod and adapter too, as the Mustang transmission he grafted into it had the shifter down by his ankles

 

[tonydi]

Who the heck thought that was a good idea?? (I don't mean to poke fun, sorry if it was you) Are carbon fiber pins a thing?

There was a company back around 1980 called Polimotor Research (http://polimotor.com/) who pioneered composite engine components. As racers we were looking for technology that would give us an advantage so when we found out about these super lightweight engine pieces we jumped at the chance. We originally thought about doing their "plastic" connecting rods but decided just to dip our toes in with the piston pins.

We provided a sample of the thin-wall steel piston pins we were using at the time and Polimotor sent us the CF pins. Unfortunately they were like .010" too long so they told us to just face off one end. What they didn't tell us was that we must face it in a certain direction. I don't recall if it was outside to inside or inside towards the outside. We faced them whichever way was wrong and while they looked just fine, the whole integrity of the fiber weave was compromised.

Fired it up, set the idle to 2500 RPM to run the camshaft break-in and BAM!

If you want to go the red direction, phenolic rod would be about the right color. Red rhulon is too, but that's mega expensive.

I'll check out phenolic, thanks!

If you want to pizazz up a black delrin knob, you could stack in some red discs or cut grooves and add red o rings.

I like where you're going with this!

I have some bronze rod that I could give you a chunk of.

Thanks, Matthew, but I'm trying to stay away from metal because of the heat issue.

I've made quite a few things out of Delrin and if there was a way to actually glue pieces together or glue other things to Delrin, it would be my #1 favorite material to work with. I've got some stock in the right sizes so I'm going to machine up a prototype just to get all the dimensions worked out and see if I've missed something regarding how the shift safety button works.

 

[tonydi]

I don't think you'd like the feel of delrin, it's very slippery.

If this were a manual trans car then I agree, I wouldn't be looking at Delrin. But it's an 8-speed auto with shifter paddles on the steering wheel so the lever is mostly just to get it in and out of Park or into manual shift mode (which still uses the paddles).

 

[mattthemuppet2]

I'd go with a very dark tight grain hard wood with a brass inlay then if it were me. I don't much like plastic in cars