home made 1354e shifter

[steevn]

Hey guys, I made this shifter for my truck and it's been working pretty well. I know alot of guys on this forum could make it to, so I'm gonna post some pics of how I did it. The main drawback is that you have to cut a hole in your frame. I've done some medium 4 wheeling with the hole cut and it's been holding up just fine so far.

Shown in 4L here, the detent spots from top to bottom are 2H, 4H, N, 4L

The plastic knob is off one of those small bungees

This hole could be boxed or gusseted, it's been holding up just fine like this though.

 

[RonD]

Very inventive

 

[steevn]

Thanks, glad to see some interest. The whole idea behind this is to change your worm drive shift motor into a manually actuated rack and pinion.

get a shift motor and dissasemble it you wont need the rotor or stator.

drill out the rivets that hold on the brush board

you'll need a 3/8" steel rod available from the hardware store, this is going to be the rack, the old gear from the motor will be the pinion. Also note that I've trimmed away the stator mounting flange, this is necessary.

 

[bucko]

Will this pictorial continue? I wanted to see how you turned the gear (pinion) with the rod; did you simply weld the rod to the gear to make it turn the shaft in the transfer case to select the 2WH/4WH/4WL positions?

Its a miracle that my 4 wheel system still works at 215K on its odometer. While I'm happy it still does (stock), it could fail in the future, and I like the idea of converting the transfer case to a manual engagement system, such as how you have done. This eliminates a whole bunch of items that can fail.

 

[steevn]

Yes the pictorial will continue, I'll post some pics every day or when I have time. I'll do my best to explain whats going on in the pics but if you've got questions fire away and I'll try to answer them. To turn the gear with the rod you'll have to make the rod slide through the gear housing and then cut teeth in it to mesh up to the gear. The following pics should show what I'm talking about.


You'll have to remove this threaded plug, its located under some silicone on the side opposite the rotor shaft bushing.

After removing the plug, drill out the threaded hole with a 3/8" drill, continue drilling through the rotor bushing on the other side.

The 3/8" rod should then be able to slide right through the housing, if it's tight run the drill through it a little more till it feels more free, be careful and don't over do it.

You can see here that the rotor bushing still has some metal left in it. The rod slides right up against the aluminum in the housing on the other side, this seems ok to me.

 

[bucko]

Fantastic post! I hope to see how you cut teeth on the rod in order to have it spin the gear.

While others will state a conversion using an early Explorer floor shift is easier, I respect someone who performs this mod using good old know how and engineering skills. Thanks for sharing! besides, it does a good job in explaining how simple this is, and how complicated Ford had to make it in order to allow the "lazy" person to simply turn a knob (or press a button) on the dash to engauge 4 wheel drive.

 

[steevn]

Yeah, it may be easier to replace the whole transfer case, but when mine stopped shifting I knew the transfer case was still good and just couldn't throw it out, and I didn't wanna fix that stuped e-shift system cuz I hated it, so I came up with this. Apparantly I didn't really take any pics of cutting the teeth, or some of the other steps, so I'll try to describe it.



To cut the teeth in the 3/8" rod you'll need a dremel moto tool with heavy duty cut off wheels (the thicker ones), a hacksaw and a small file that has a triangle shape. Start cutting the teeth about 4" from the end of the rod and you'll need about 6" worth of teeth. It's possible that your local machine shop could do this for you, I just cut a couple teeth whenever I had time, it took about a month. Use the housing and the gear while you cut teeth to make shure it meshes up smooth. Start each tooth with the dremel then adjust the depth with the hacksaw and fine tune with the file. After you get about 4 teeth cut and can move the rod in the housing with the gear, you can use the gear to mark the next tooth position because the rod is softer than the gear. This part takes alot of patience, just take your time and be careful. Since the bw1354e shifts really easily it's not real critical that the teeth be perfect, ive got some questionable teeth in mine. Once the teeth are complete cut the rod about 1 to 1.5" from the last tooth. On the other side I heated up the end and beat it till it was about 1/8 to 3/16" thick and then drilled a hole in it for the clevis attachment, as can be seen here.

You'll use this little stop knob to determine when your done cutting teeth, when the rod will turn the gear from stop to stop you've cut enough teeth. When your done with the teeth, grind this off, it will get in the way later.

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

 

[bucko]

Great write up. Thanks. Gives me ideas to do for those rainy days.

 

[steevn]

Yeah this is a perfect rainy day proj, just work on it a little whenever you have time, thats what I did.

At this point you get into some aluminum welding, I got the aluminum spool gun for my lincoln mig welder a few years ago and have ended up using it more than I thought, or you could have someone else do it.


You'll need to pick up some 1/2" aluminum tube and some 1-1/2" x 1/8" aluminum bar. The 3/8" steel shaft will fit inside this 1/2" aluminum tube perfectly.

This next pic shows it basically completed.

1)You have to cut 3 tabs off the 1/8" aluminum bar and weld them to the housing for your new mount positions, mount it up to the t-case and estimate the positions of them. I drilled the holes after I welded them on, and as you can see from the abomination of a hole on the right, this is not easy.

2)Cut about 1" off the aluminum tube and weld it onto the housing side where the 3/8" shaft will connect to the shift cable.

3)On the other side you'll need to weld on about 6-7" of tube, just enough to cover the shaft when it's pushed all the way in. To get them straight just make sure the shaft is in them when you weld.

4)shown here is the shift cable, it's 3' from end to end has 10-32 threads and 6 or 7" inches travel, available from california push pull.

Here it is mounted on the t-case. You'll have to clock it about 190° from its original position, this will be how you can estimate the position of the mounting tabs to be welded on, you'll have to grind away at the housing a bit to get the new bolts through, dont worry about this as there is virtually zero torque applied to the housing. One of the tabs will be located right under where the shaft comes out, you have to use a shorter bolt here. You'll want to use motorcycle type bolts, the kind with the 8mm head. The cable mount is made from 3" x 1/8" steel bar, those 4 threaded and tapped holes on the bottom of the 1354e make perfect mounts for this. I hose clamped part of a bicycle inner tube to the aluminum tube welded on in step 2 previously, this protects the exposed shaft and shift cable. On the other side I just tie wrapped an old rag to act as a dirt block on the end.