Working on the Shifter Project: A Hands-on Approach

As I began working on the shifter project, I started by notching the tabs and making them suitable for welding to the center piece of the steering rack. The bolts were already installed down to a certain point with washers on each side, so I needed to create a secure attachment point. To do this, I ran a notch through the tab and then held it in place where I wanted it to be. With the bolt already seated, I simply welded the tab into position. This process was repeated for both sides of the tab, as well as at the joints that connect to the shifter.

The next step in the project involved creating another piece of tubing that would extend upwards from the center piece. This new component would be used to create a handle that could be pulled back and forth to shift gears. I fabricated this new piece using the available tubing, ensuring it was long enough to reach up to the desired height next to the steering wheel. The resulting piece had a slight curve, which I planned to have bent out further to provide a smooth transition for the shifting mechanism.

To test the functionality of the handle, I simulated its movement by attaching vice grips to it and clamping them onto the center piece. By adjusting the position of these grips, I was able to demonstrate how the shifter would work in reverse – pushing forward on the grip to downshift into first gear, and then pulling back to shift up to higher gears.

With the basic functionality of the handle established, I turned my attention to connecting it to the rest of the transmission. The process involved welding everything in place, starting with the bolts that secure the center piece to the steering rack. As I worked, I realized that I would need to make some additional modifications to ensure a smooth and reliable shifting mechanism.

Ultimately, my goal for this project was to create a functional shifter that could be installed in the car. While it's unlikely that the finished product will ever be considered "complete," I aimed to demonstrate how each component contributes to the overall system. The success of this project hinges on its ability to provide a smooth and seamless shifting experience, which I'm confident can be achieved with further refinement and testing.

After completing the initial setup, I took some time to test the functionality of the shifter in reverse. To shift into first gear, I pushed forward on the simulated handle, while to shift up into higher gears, I pulled back. The mechanism worked as intended, locking each gear in place until it was released by releasing the grip.

However, there are still a few areas that need improvement. For one, the seat is currently being used due to its comfort and accessibility for running cables under the hood. While I'd like to explore alternative options in the future, this seat will remain my working companion for the time being.

Despite some minor issues, I'm pleased with the progress made on this project so far. It's clear that every component plays a crucial role in the overall system, and it's essential to consider each part when designing or building a transmission. With further refinement and testing, I'm confident that this shifter will provide an excellent shifting experience for anyone who uses it.

Looking ahead, I'll be taking this project to PFI tomorrow to have it professionally bent into shape. This should allow me to achieve the smooth curve I desire while avoiding any potential issues with angles or sharp edges. Once the bending process is complete, I'll continue working on completing the shifter handle and connecting it to the rest of the transmission.

Over the coming weeks, I'll be dedicating more time to refining this project. While it's unlikely that the finished product will ever meet the highest standards of completion, I'm committed to ensuring its functionality and smooth operation. As with any complex system, there will always be areas for improvement, but with persistence and patience, I'm confident in my ability to create a transmission shifter that meets my expectations.

For now, it's time to conclude this working session on the project. The next step involves putting the seat back into its original position and running the remaining cables under the hood. This may not be as glamorous as other aspects of car customization, but it's an essential part of bringing this transmission to life.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's going on guys I know a lot of you have been asking about the shopping go-kart and I really just haven't had too much time to work on this thing I've been working on my cars a lot more lately but uh I did read the comments I noticed that some of you guys want an update so that's what I'm going to be doing in this video and I'm actually going to be trying to work on it some so I don't know where I left off last but a couple things I did do to this that I don't think I made a video about is I got a gas pedal rigged up that works pretty good I actually did drive it around and that works really good I still got to do a break and then I was also messing with the steering quite a bit to uh try to get this thing to stop under steering so hard like it literally would not steer at all because all the weight's in the back and when we were at the go-kart track yesterday with Adam l z and Trevor I got the chance to talk to this one guy about his go-kart they had all the racing go-karts out there and he said that having the Caster on these brackets right here is really important because what that allows it to do is lift up like one whole side of the cart when you're going into a corner and that lets this inside Tire uh spin kind of freely and then all of the traction will go to the outside Tire when you're like making a corner so I'm not sure how effective it will be on my chassis because it has a lot of flex in it so when it lifts up one side it just kind of twists the chassis to correct for it but I still think it might help quite a bit so that is one thing I did last night as you can see these brackets have a bit of angle to them they are facing backwards now I read online that you need to do like 20 to 25° of Caster on a standard cart but I just eyeballed it and hopefully it makes some sort of difference and worst case scenario if it doesn't work I'm just going to end up putting PVC uh sleeves over these rear tires right here and just make this thing into a little shopping cart drift cart but what I'm going to be doing for today is getting this steering wheel mounted up because I still have not done that so I need to do that today and I also did get the clutch working I don't know if I have that video I think I do but the clutch works pretty good and yeah going to get the steering wheel mounted up and also I need to wire in this battery not sure if I'll get that to that today or not but that is something else I need to do and feel like I had a couple other things that I can't think of right now but as I go along I'll definitely mention what else I'm doing to it but I mainly want to get that steering wheel mounted up today so that's what oh yeah I was going to do the shifter I want to try to get the shifter set up as well because I can only driveing around in one gear at a time right now so I'm going to try to get the steering wheel mounted and the shifter like somewhat ran today so we'll see how far we get on this thing what the are you trying to record bro just me tacking that bar on oh the bar bar yeah yeah I still don't think it's going to help you that much for the flex I'm not doing that for the flex you dip what are you doing it for to mount my steering wheel up then amount of bars coming off that why don't you just do them off the side bars cuz then it would be like super wide and I won't have any room for my legs right here I need them to be like almost straight up and down idiot true just just stop and let me do my thing okay why don't you just do one going straight up Notch it cuz that would look stupid how would it look stupid you have a whole bunch of room do the camera you just want to hold it God damn it come on just literally attack come on just hold it bro God right there this is why I never get anything done no you're lazy cover you guys eyes no just kidding okay it's all I needed thank you you better weld that all the way up before you drive it I will not yeah you're probably not going to boom just like that get stop ow holy Rick get out of the road geese y'all going to get ran over oh dude oh oh oh this guy's helping him across the road I'm going laugh when they attack him there they go all right so we just got back from the hardware store I just needed to get a couple bolts to bolt this Center column down and it is really solid it's still just tacked together but it came out pretty good that should work just fine I just got to take it back apart and then weld everything back together but I drilled holes right through the bottom right here so I could unbolt it later on if I needed to I didn't just weld it straight down to the rest of the cart but pretty happy with how that came out and I also got some things for the shifter I have an idea of how I'm going to do this hopefully it works so this is what I'm thinking right now I have these little brackets that I got from Ace Hardware I was going to do like Hy joints but they didn't have anything like that but they did have these and I got a push rod right here this one should be plenty strong to push and pull on the little shifter Fork thing in the back and it shouldn't Flex at all and what I was thinking to do is take two of these bolts and weld them on either end just like that and then this will thread on just like that and I can adjust the length just a little bit and I also have some nuts over here to lock it into place so this will basically just run under the seat I'm not going to get under there right now but that will run under the seat and then I just need to drill a hole through the shifter right here put a bolt through that and then this will be able to push and pull on the shifter right there and then as far as making a shifter up here uh this is my idea I have so far uh I have this piece of pipe with two nuts welded in on each side I need to fully weld them on and then grind this spot flat but for now I just want to make sure it works and I'm think sorry the air compressor came on right there but I plan on just putting this right along the column that I just made and I'll have two tabs one on top and one on bottom of each side of this pipe and then drill two holes through those and then that will allow this to Pivot freely in between those two tabs and then I will weld a tab off the bottom of this pipe that will go out this way like that and then connect the other end of the rod to that and then when you pivot this it will pull it forward or push it back and then off the top of this I'll just have an angled piece of pipe coming up uh past the steering wheel like right here so then I can just pull it back or push it forward to downshift and upshift and while I've been working on this thing Charlie got his wagon running right it seems yeah the valve lash was off yeah the valve lash was way too tight so he loosened them up and that's all it took now seems to run just fine so we're going to go take it on a test drive rip clutch I can throw it into gear one anded better than I can too y Charlie's wagon feels like it's running pretty good those pools felt really nice so hopefully everything's all good with his wagon it's running once again but right before we left this is as far as I got on the shifter so I pretty much got everything ground down as far as the welds go on those nuts I got the holes drilled through these tabs and I also notched them because I'm going to be welding them to that Center piece right there on the steering rack got the bolts all the way ran down with a wash on each side so now I'm just going to hold it in here where I want it something like that and then just tack it on for now and then start making the rest of the shifter and then just make sure everything works before I fully weld it up so I'm going to get this piece tacked on right now and then I'm not sure where the other piece of tubing I'm going to use is at but I'm going to make another piece that comes off of this and it will be up here higher next to the steering wheel that I will actually grab to pull back and forth to shift and then I will also make another tab coming off the bottom right down there in between here so then when I pull and push on the lever it will turn that Tab and then I just got to connect the push rod to that piece and then run that back and connect it to the shifter and hopefully everything works how I want it to okay guys so this is as far as I'm going to get tonight um I was going to try to make the shifter handle itself but I realized I want to go ahead and take this to PFI tomorrow and get it bent so that I can have a nice like curve coming off of it right to there I was going to like cut it into angles but I think that would look pretty bad so I'm just going to wait till tomorrow until I can get this piece bent out and then I will make the rest of the handle coming off this piece right here and then it will sit like up behind the steering wheel somewhere in this area just to get an idea with the steering wheel on I'm probably going to put it about right here so pull back to shift into the next gear and then push forward W to downshift and right now I have these vice grips on there simulating the handle so these are just clamped onto that piece pretty good I got the tab all the way welded on coming off of it right here and then got both sides welded and then ran to these little joints right here that goes all the way back to the shifter and I still need to weld everything down solid I need to weld on the back sides of these tabs take all this apart and get everything welded up for good and real quick I can show you guys that it does work so right now it's in neutral and this is a one down four up transmission on this thing so to go into first gear which is down you push forward on these vice grips and then the rest of the gears will be pulling back so and the reason why I have these vice grips facing this way not more like forward right here like it would be like on the shifter is because it hits on the side of the cart right here so I just have them sideways so to go into first gear you click these guys forward anoun in first locks it up and then the rest of the gears will be going back so now it's in second still locked up then third locked up and then to go back down to neutral we go forward one so that should be second right there yep and then one more half click and we're in neutral again so works pretty good I just got to get everything welded up and I think she will be ready for her first test drive but that will not be until tomorrow because got pretty late outside and I need to put the seat back in I really do want to try to find a different seat but I have to run this one for now just because without it it is so uncomfortable on that thing and also I need all these cables in this Rod to run underneath it anyways so I might try to look for a new seat later on but this one is going to be the one I'm using for now so I know some of you guys don't like that thing but it's whatever it's really comfy and I honestly think it looks kind of cool but it definitely could look better if the seat didn't sit up so high have one that ends like right at the top of the basket but yeah that's as far as I'm getting for tonight guys so I know you guys wanted to see a video on this thing so here it is I spent all of today working on this thing and I will try to be getting it done here in the next few weeks I say that now but you never know I might give up on it again if we have some more stuff come up on the cars but and what I mean by getting it done is at least like running and driving around like kind of solidly but it still will never be done so yeah we'll see that's as far as I'm getting for tonight though so thanks for watchingwhat's going on guys I know a lot of you have been asking about the shopping go-kart and I really just haven't had too much time to work on this thing I've been working on my cars a lot more lately but uh I did read the comments I noticed that some of you guys want an update so that's what I'm going to be doing in this video and I'm actually going to be trying to work on it some so I don't know where I left off last but a couple things I did do to this that I don't think I made a video about is I got a gas pedal rigged up that works pretty good I actually did drive it around and that works really good I still got to do a break and then I was also messing with the steering quite a bit to uh try to get this thing to stop under steering so hard like it literally would not steer at all because all the weight's in the back and when we were at the go-kart track yesterday with Adam l z and Trevor I got the chance to talk to this one guy about his go-kart they had all the racing go-karts out there and he said that having the Caster on these brackets right here is really important because what that allows it to do is lift up like one whole side of the cart when you're going into a corner and that lets this inside Tire uh spin kind of freely and then all of the traction will go to the outside Tire when you're like making a corner so I'm not sure how effective it will be on my chassis because it has a lot of flex in it so when it lifts up one side it just kind of twists the chassis to correct for it but I still think it might help quite a bit so that is one thing I did last night as you can see these brackets have a bit of angle to them they are facing backwards now I read online that you need to do like 20 to 25° of Caster on a standard cart but I just eyeballed it and hopefully it makes some sort of difference and worst case scenario if it doesn't work I'm just going to end up putting PVC uh sleeves over these rear tires right here and just make this thing into a little shopping cart drift cart but what I'm going to be doing for today is getting this steering wheel mounted up because I still have not done that so I need to do that today and I also did get the clutch working I don't know if I have that video I think I do but the clutch works pretty good and yeah going to get the steering wheel mounted up and also I need to wire in this battery not sure if I'll get that to that today or not but that is something else I need to do and feel like I had a couple other things that I can't think of right now but as I go along I'll definitely mention what else I'm doing to it but I mainly want to get that steering wheel mounted up today so that's what oh yeah I was going to do the shifter I want to try to get the shifter set up as well because I can only driveing around in one gear at a time right now so I'm going to try to get the steering wheel mounted and the shifter like somewhat ran today so we'll see how far we get on this thing what the are you trying to record bro just me tacking that bar on oh the bar bar yeah yeah I still don't think it's going to help you that much for the flex I'm not doing that for the flex you dip what are you doing it for to mount my steering wheel up then amount of bars coming off that why don't you just do them off the side bars cuz then it would be like super wide and I won't have any room for my legs right here I need them to be like almost straight up and down idiot true just just stop and let me do my thing okay why don't you just do one going straight up Notch it cuz that would look stupid how would it look stupid you have a whole bunch of room do the camera you just want to hold it God damn it come on just literally attack come on just hold it bro God right there this is why I never get anything done no you're lazy cover you guys eyes no just kidding okay it's all I needed thank you you better weld that all the way up before you drive it I will not yeah you're probably not going to boom just like that get stop ow holy Rick get out of the road geese y'all going to get ran over oh dude oh oh oh this guy's helping him across the road I'm going laugh when they attack him there they go all right so we just got back from the hardware store I just needed to get a couple bolts to bolt this Center column down and it is really solid it's still just tacked together but it came out pretty good that should work just fine I just got to take it back apart and then weld everything back together but I drilled holes right through the bottom right here so I could unbolt it later on if I needed to I didn't just weld it straight down to the rest of the cart but pretty happy with how that came out and I also got some things for the shifter I have an idea of how I'm going to do this hopefully it works so this is what I'm thinking right now I have these little brackets that I got from Ace Hardware I was going to do like Hy joints but they didn't have anything like that but they did have these and I got a push rod right here this one should be plenty strong to push and pull on the little shifter Fork thing in the back and it shouldn't Flex at all and what I was thinking to do is take two of these bolts and weld them on either end just like that and then this will thread on just like that and I can adjust the length just a little bit and I also have some nuts over here to lock it into place so this will basically just run under the seat I'm not going to get under there right now but that will run under the seat and then I just need to drill a hole through the shifter right here put a bolt through that and then this will be able to push and pull on the shifter right there and then as far as making a shifter up here uh this is my idea I have so far uh I have this piece of pipe with two nuts welded in on each side I need to fully weld them on and then grind this spot flat but for now I just want to make sure it works and I'm think sorry the air compressor came on right there but I plan on just putting this right along the column that I just made and I'll have two tabs one on top and one on bottom of each side of this pipe and then drill two holes through those and then that will allow this to Pivot freely in between those two tabs and then I will weld a tab off the bottom of this pipe that will go out this way like that and then connect the other end of the rod to that and then when you pivot this it will pull it forward or push it back and then off the top of this I'll just have an angled piece of pipe coming up uh past the steering wheel like right here so then I can just pull it back or push it forward to downshift and upshift and while I've been working on this thing Charlie got his wagon running right it seems yeah the valve lash was off yeah the valve lash was way too tight so he loosened them up and that's all it took now seems to run just fine so we're going to go take it on a test drive rip clutch I can throw it into gear one anded better than I can too y Charlie's wagon feels like it's running pretty good those pools felt really nice so hopefully everything's all good with his wagon it's running once again but right before we left this is as far as I got on the shifter so I pretty much got everything ground down as far as the welds go on those nuts I got the holes drilled through these tabs and I also notched them because I'm going to be welding them to that Center piece right there on the steering rack got the bolts all the way ran down with a wash on each side so now I'm just going to hold it in here where I want it something like that and then just tack it on for now and then start making the rest of the shifter and then just make sure everything works before I fully weld it up so I'm going to get this piece tacked on right now and then I'm not sure where the other piece of tubing I'm going to use is at but I'm going to make another piece that comes off of this and it will be up here higher next to the steering wheel that I will actually grab to pull back and forth to shift and then I will also make another tab coming off the bottom right down there in between here so then when I pull and push on the lever it will turn that Tab and then I just got to connect the push rod to that piece and then run that back and connect it to the shifter and hopefully everything works how I want it to okay guys so this is as far as I'm going to get tonight um I was going to try to make the shifter handle itself but I realized I want to go ahead and take this to PFI tomorrow and get it bent so that I can have a nice like curve coming off of it right to there I was going to like cut it into angles but I think that would look pretty bad so I'm just going to wait till tomorrow until I can get this piece bent out and then I will make the rest of the handle coming off this piece right here and then it will sit like up behind the steering wheel somewhere in this area just to get an idea with the steering wheel on I'm probably going to put it about right here so pull back to shift into the next gear and then push forward W to downshift and right now I have these vice grips on there simulating the handle so these are just clamped onto that piece pretty good I got the tab all the way welded on coming off of it right here and then got both sides welded and then ran to these little joints right here that goes all the way back to the shifter and I still need to weld everything down solid I need to weld on the back sides of these tabs take all this apart and get everything welded up for good and real quick I can show you guys that it does work so right now it's in neutral and this is a one down four up transmission on this thing so to go into first gear which is down you push forward on these vice grips and then the rest of the gears will be pulling back so and the reason why I have these vice grips facing this way not more like forward right here like it would be like on the shifter is because it hits on the side of the cart right here so I just have them sideways so to go into first gear you click these guys forward anoun in first locks it up and then the rest of the gears will be going back so now it's in second still locked up then third locked up and then to go back down to neutral we go forward one so that should be second right there yep and then one more half click and we're in neutral again so works pretty good I just got to get everything welded up and I think she will be ready for her first test drive but that will not be until tomorrow because got pretty late outside and I need to put the seat back in I really do want to try to find a different seat but I have to run this one for now just because without it it is so uncomfortable on that thing and also I need all these cables in this Rod to run underneath it anyways so I might try to look for a new seat later on but this one is going to be the one I'm using for now so I know some of you guys don't like that thing but it's whatever it's really comfy and I honestly think it looks kind of cool but it definitely could look better if the seat didn't sit up so high have one that ends like right at the top of the basket but yeah that's as far as I'm getting for tonight guys so I know you guys wanted to see a video on this thing so here it is I spent all of today working on this thing and I will try to be getting it done here in the next few weeks I say that now but you never know I might give up on it again if we have some more stuff come up on the cars but and what I mean by getting it done is at least like running and driving around like kind of solidly but it still will never be done so yeah we'll see that's as far as I'm getting for tonight though so thanks for watching\n"