4x4Wire's TrailTalk Forums: Building the next StinkBug........Super Trooper

I spent last night at the shop working, and today is just such a beautiful day I decided to take the afternoon off and go ride my motorcycle. Before I do that I've got a few new pics to add though. I took a trip to the local metal supplier yesterday to find material to make my t-case shifters out of, and I found just the right stuff. For the bracket that holds the shifters I got a short length of 1/2"x1.75" 6061 Aluminum, for the bottom section of the shifters I got some .75"x1" Cold rolled Steel bar, and for the actual levers I got some .50" cold rolled round bar. For the linkages I got some 1/8"x3/4" flat bar and a number of small hitch pins, bolts, etc. from Lowes.

Heres the mounting plate and shifter bottoms after cutting to length and drilling some of the pivot holes.

And heres one of the early test fittings. To build the linkages I took the 1/8"x3/4" flat bar, drilled the holes in the ends then cut slots in the center. This allowed me to slide the 2 pieces together perpendicular to each other, adjust to the correct length, then weld in place. Looks a little funky, but it works really well and it was an easy way to solve the problem of having the pivot pins perpendicular to each other.

I didn't wanna have to worry about breaking the shifter levers off when leaning on them hard, so I drilled the bases 1" deep from the top. This allows me to push the lever down into the base, and the weld will simply keep the pieces from separating, instead of taking all the load.

Heres a shot of the shifter bases and linkages after all the drilling, grinding, etc. To make the slots in the bases for the linkages I simply used a cutting wheel on a 4.5" grinder. Not exactly the most elegant way, but I dont own a mill, so it works.

Once everything was drilled I bolted it together and started figuring out handle locations. With a straight lever the reach was a little far, and I wanna be able to operate everything with shoulder harnesses on tight, so I used a torch to heat up the round bar and bent it to fit.

Here are all the pieces complete and ready for paint. For the threads I simply cut off a couple 1/2" bolts then used a 5/8" sleeve to join the shanks of the bolts to the round bar of the levers. BTW, I found out that Lowes carries steel sleeves in all the standard ID's to slide over most bolts. Makes this kinda thing super simple.

Ok paint is drying now, time to go ride

Dallas

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Crew Chief, RedBull RockCrawling Team

StinkyFab Custom Metal Creations

Project StinkBug

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