Black ebony OEM 'style' 4WD shifter knob.. lots of pics..

[sandcruiser]

be careful about epoxy... if/when you need to drop the tranny/tcase, it can be awfully handy to remove the shifter knob without destroying it

another approach that might work-- cut new threads with a die, then get some metal tube and tap it, then inset the tube into the shifter w/ epoxy. More work, but better results.

I imagine that you might also be able to do something like fill the shifter with lead solder (careful not to burn the wood!) then thread that... but I would worry that it won't hold very well as it is pretty soft

 

[voyager:01]

sandcruiser i like the idea of threading pipe stock and inserting it into the knob.. that may be the best way to go.. thatnx for the advice.

everyone else thanx for lookin.. i know it's 30+ pics for just a shifter knob.. but hey.. just having fun with it.. ;p.

 

[MoCoNative]

Let us know if it is any more quite. The transfer linkage typically rattles on a 40 until you think your head may explode going down the highway. I have tried many things to quite mine. Better boot, more rubber, bungee cords, etc... Getting all the linkage tight helps, but you can only do so much. Wha tI found was the stock knob on earlier models is actually hollow. Because of this, the vibrations and rattles of the shifter shaft, would resonate through the hollow knob. Loosing the knob a turn or so, until it is just loose helps, as you no longer have a soilid mount of the knob, just the knob rattles, but no resonance. But the first time it rattle clean off, or you go for it and it spins in your hand and you hit the dash with your head, you cuss this redneck fix.

So I found that the top bit of the knob came off. I thin suffed the knob with some of that white putty stuff you can use to stick posters to the wall, or as a pliable eraser. This did alot to quite the resonance of the hollow plastic knob. I suspect this dense solid wood will help too. May be well worth the effort for others. I have tried the solid rubber/plastic knobs from the 60 series, but the shaft diameter and threads are different.

 

[alex e]

Hey Voyager look for a helicoil insert that matches the threads of the rod. You do want to be able to remove this thing in the future during servicing, etc. Ebony is very hard and will shatter, as you know from this project, so don't whack it to seat the knob if you use epoxy inside. I thought about doing something similar b/c I hate the "little" txfr knob too. If you search, I was going to put a 60 series knob on my 40 txfr shifter, but it ended up looking silly on that spindly little shaft. Any quality hardware supply will have a threaded helicoil insert, although you may need to enlatge the diameter of your knob......now that I think of it a sealer probably isn't necessary with ebony.

 

[alex e]

Let us know if it is any more quite. The transfer linkage typically rattles on a 40 until you think your head may explode going down the highway. I have tried many things to quite mine. Better boot, more rubber, bungee cords, etc... Getting all the linkage tight helps, but you can only do so much. Wha tI found was the stock knob on earlier models is actually hollow. Because of this, the vibrations and rattles of the shifter shaft, would resonate through the hollow knob. Loosing the knob a turn or so, until it is just loose helps, as you no longer have a soilid mount of the knob, just the knob rattles, but no resonance. But the first time it rattle clean off, or you go for it and it spins in your hand and you hit the dash with your head, you cuss this redneck fix.

So I found that the top bit of the knob came off. I thin suffed the knob with some of that white putty stuff you can use to stick posters to the wall, or as a pliable eraser. This did alot to quite the resonance of the hollow plastic knob. I suspect this dense solid wood will help too. May be well worth the effort for others. I have tried the solid rubber/plastic knobs from the 60 series, but the shaft diameter and threads are different.

Good thing to bring up MoCo. The noise comes from the metal shift lever itself and the fact that it is all metal and attached physically to the drivetrain. It is acting as a speaker and the knob itself is the last bit to broadcast sound. In my BMW M5, I tried several short shift kits, each having a different "ball" to pivot on the bottom where it inserts into the manual tranny. Different materials dampened differently and wore out at different rates (slop in the shifter) and thus produced different levels of noise. There are even all metal indestructable short shift levers that are old school racing BMW stuff, but the best, quietest setups were constructed of a metal outer layer surrounding a dense composite inner core and a composite softer "ball" at the union with the tranny. In a quiet, uber fast sedan, you wanted to hear the engine, not the metallic whirring of your tranny! I ran these below in all my Ms.....