Short Shafted

I’m gradually moving over the good parts into the rally FX as that is the dedicated race vehicle. I’d swapped the steering wheel last week. This afternoon I decided to swap the short ratio shifter over. This shifter has been with me since the very first FX16, it’s of unknown origin, but I think it’s a TRD made for JDM AE92 Corolla. The key points are that the ball joints match, the rest was made to work. The way this kit works you can see here. The stock shaft is on the left, the short ratio on the right. The main pivot is moved up so the ratio for the fore-aft movement is quickened. The short side stub is for the left-right motion and remains the same length and ratio. To allow for the extra length of shaft below the pivot, an aluminum spacer is used below the mount for the ball joint. This had to be modified with some filing as some of the mounting bolts did not line up.

There was a couple of issues with this kit that I hadn’t bothered with before and decided to tackle now. The bigest one is that since it’s for the JDM, it’s made for right hand drive. You can see the difference in the bend of the shafts. While still perfectly usable, it does place the shifter farther away than ideal, getting to 5th gear is a pretty good stretch. I figured there was two ways to correct this. One was to heat the shaft with a torch and bend it, or the other was to cut it, grind a bevel, and weld it back together at the desired angle. I decided to go the cut and weld route, I figured it would also shorten the ratio even more, which is the poor man’s short shifter method. Then there is the hack FX I got, the one that had the under dash black light neon tube. That one the shaft was cut, and then shortened by overlapping the pieces and holding them together with hose clamps! Super ghetto!

Hit it with the angle grinder cut-off wheel and zip right through it. Grind a new angle then clean it up with a file. Pulled out the welder. Yes, I admit one of the reasons I decided to do it this way is I wanted to weld. And with something like this, it’s hard to mess up. I cranked up the welder, give it all she’s got cap’n, it’s all the way at 10! A few zaps and it was done. Not quite the same angle, but it should work fine.

The other issue is really minor and was actually ignored and the shifter still worked fine. What it was was the stops and spring centering for the left-right motion. When the spacer is installed, the linkages are spaced away from the mounting base and so the parts that act as bumper stops for the linkage and spring mount that centers it no longer function. Now that I have the technology to easily fix that, I decided to rememdy that. All that I needed to do was move these parts the same distance as the spacer. I drilled out the spot welds and repositioned the stopper the appropriate distance. Dialed back the welder and spot welded it in. Looked good.

Now the issue with the centering spring bracket. It mounts with a single bolt, but if it’s moved up the correct amount, that bolt ends up above the main bracket. I thought about welding on a piece of metal as an extension, but this time decided as much as I like welding, this would take time in fabricating for something that didn’t really need it. Instead I figured tapping a hole into the aluminum spacer at the appropriate location, finding a longer bolt, and using some washers to fill the gap would work just as well.

It works just as well and was done in no time. Got it all together and swapped into the rally FX. Position feels good, shift throw is indeed quite a bit shorter now. This setup feels quite a bit notchy, I’m not sure what can be done about that. I greased up all the joints and even swaped the plastic bushings for the ball joints. I think one problem is the construction of the aluminum spacer block leaves a lot of the base of the ball joint unsupported. Not being designed for this shifter the hole machined into it is too big, not much I can do about that. Anyway, I’m happy with it now, ready to race!