When it's time to start threading, push a couple of paper towels down over the rod, to catch any drippings from the cutting oil. This helped the die engage to start cutting: a 1/2-20 die really wants slightly less than a 0.5" diameter rod. A locking micrometer ensured we got it narrowed enough in each direction. File North/South then East/West, then the diagonals, then round it off. You can see the beginnings of that process in the photo above, including the bits of metal from the filing caught on the tape. In order to help the die engage better, I filed off a few thousandths around the knob, taking off most of the knurling. You really don't want sharp metal shavings falling into the mechanism. We had a grid of tape poked through the rod, plus extra on the sides, and then a cone-shaped piece as an extra "inner" protection at the top. Use painter's tape with the sticky-side up to form a protective layer above this to catch the metal shavings. This covers the hole that the boot covered and is your "last resort" protection. Slide a sheet of plastic wrap down over the shifter, poking a small hole in the top so it's a very tight fit. Don't drop anything down there! Since it's now time to cut metal, we want to protect that space. Once you've done that, you've got the whole shift lever exposed. Removing the lockout and boot makes for a lot easier working space. You can then remove the reverse lockout and boot by lifting it up and shimmying it a bit at the top and bottom. On my 2012 6-speed, it just took some twisting back and forth with my hand and a strong grip to remove the knob. This is what the shift lever looks like after you pull off the knob. It's totally functional, but that was an extra 20-30 minutes to get it carefully re-drilled by someone with a very experienced hand at this sort of thing.Īll of the clever ideas (like how to protect the space under the boot) below are from my friend, not me. In the end it required over-drilling slightly because the tap was binding. To do that without maring the outer surface required my friend making a custom clamp for the inner surface to hold it tight in his small lathe while drilling and tapping. We ended up drilling out the reverse adapter and re-tapping it to 1/2-20. My recommendation for anyone who wants to do this with less trouble is to ask Sickspeed if they can make a 1/2-20 reverse adapter with the same inner diameter as their 10-1.25 one (linked above). I'm glad I didn't try to go it alone: I would have had a devil of a time cutting and threading this to 10x1.25! I've seen people on the forums who said they did that, and I'm very curious how they managed to shave off that much material. This required modifying the reverse lockout too.Īfter asking at a couple of auto shops and getting turned-down for the job (I learned why they weren't interested: it's a pain), I found a friend who is a master machinist and was bored. That last adapter/reducer was bought after a consult with my friend where he suggested we'd have a lot easier time of it threading this 0.5" rod to 1/2-20 instead of cutting off ~2mm to be able to thread it to 10-1.25.
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