granite wrote:G'day DD
Basically I'm trying to avoid two handed gear changes in the hills - apart from being unsafe, too many revs are lost. Would be keen to hear your ideas for reliable and for cheap.
Cheers.
you don't have to do it two handed - you can change one then the other with one hand, order shouldn't matter.
reliable: you could set up an air shift - you'd need a compressor, a tank, a couple of air solenoid valves, and a suitable actuator, plus the necessary lines and joiners, some experimenting with brackets etc. from memory the sheft rail sticks out the back?? of the transfer - brackets shouldn't be too hard. electric or indeed direct air controls on the gear stick. air controls probably more reliable and negate the need for the solenoid valves. probably looking down the barrel of around $1000. it would probably even be possible to set this up with a switch on the clutch so you could preselect the overdrive change - set up a switch that is only operated when the clutch is fully depressed, so say you're in third and you want to shift up to third overdrive, you flick your switch on the gear stick first, then when you're ready to make the change, clutch in, the magic air stuff does it's business, clutch out and you're changed. you can do another shift on the gearbox itself at the same time.
cheap: couple of starter motor solenoids set up in a booty fab push/pull fashion, with a two-way switch on the gear stick. could probably be made reliable by someone with suitable fab skills. you can buy specific servo solenoids for that sort of thing too but they are quite expensive. this method could also be set up to preselect but I suspect it would be hard to 'tune' - solenoid engagement might be a bit harsh. with the air, you can regulate your actuating pressure up or down to make it faster or smoother.
something for you to work with anyway. Personally Id have a crack at super cheap and try and get some soleoids form the wreckers to play with, and start working on a wiring diagram. preselection would be
). I'd like to rig something up on the gear stick similar to what is used in trucks, to be able to change both the box and the fairey at the same time, or just the fairey. At present a lever pushed forward engages overdrive, pulled out disengages. My question is, does anyone out there have any suggestions how this could be done reliably (and cheaply......)? 