Project night

I'll publish a better photo later, but what you see here is my freshly minted new shifter knob. The stock one that came with the car developed a couple of fatal fault lines that gave it the stability of Nearly-headless Nick's noggin, and it was clearly time for a replacement. So I made one . . . with the help of a machinist at work.

Thursdays are project night at the shop at work, where a critical mass of Do-it-yourselfers assure that you won't cut your fingers off without anyone to drive you to the hospital, and the oversight of one of the shop modelmakers assures that your project might actually turn out nice. Thursday nights are also Bishopric meeting in the Los Altos Ward, so I usually don't get to partake in the project night festivities. This week, though, the Bishop had a meeting with the Stake President, so I was suddenly free, and with the two halves of my shifter knob threatening to part ways, the stars were aligned for me to make a replacement.

Unfortunately, I only appreciated the unique opportunity afforded me Thursday afternoon, so I didn't have a lot of time to design the thing before project night started, so with the help of my favorite Serbian designer at work, I arrived at a tenable design in record time. The model maker in the shop showed me how to program the toolpaths on the CNC machining centers and we cut the two halves of the knob out of black ABS (plastic). I fastened them together with three tight-fitting .250" dowel pins and as a finishing touch, transplanted the BMW roundel from the old shifter onto the new one.

The result is pretty nice. The spherical knob has a nice feel in my hand, and at about 1.25" shorter and much more rigid than the old knob, lends a nice, solid, mechanical feel to shifting. I'm pretty pleased.