Rob Edwards

One thing I'm digging is having PC control over the audio- The sound card in the PC has a number of sound field simulators that do a pretty good job of moving the soundstage around. Sounds great as long as the engine's not running!

I am still figuring out the best crossover settings between the sharkwoofer and Hans' speakers. Endless tweaking....

Jerry Feather

Great Report, Rob. I am holding the project open on the modification of the lower shifter insert that we have been talking about. I had designed the original tooling for the five speed before I even had one of my own. Now that I have "some" and with the measurements you and Toby have provided I see that the shifter pattern is all over the board, so to say. I have acquired one more in my fleet and will take its measurements then put them all together to come up with an opening size and location that will more likely serve all or nearly all 5 speeds.

Toby's shifter is the one that is the farthest out by being so far left that I may not be able to move the opening enough to accommodate it, but I think there is a way to move the shifter itself left or right by loosening a clamp or something like that underneath and rotating the shifter on the Torque Tube. I haven't gotten under one yet to tell for sure, but I think someone suggested that.

What do you mean by "shaft adapter?" I don't think I am up to your pay grade, but being in a different union it might be something that I could make for you.

BigAl1

Rob and Jerry - that looks GREAT! Very nicely done!

Rob Edwards

Toby was out in SoCal a couple of weeks ago, and we talked about his shift linkage- he basically just needs to put the car in 2nd gear, release the rear shift coupler clamp, put the shift lever smack in the midline of the shifter opening, and tighten the clamp. There's this silliness in the WSM about the shift lever being 2 degrees to the left of vertical, which is more trouble than it's worth. Once he gets that dialed in, I think that he should be in better shape.

That said, there is a lot of variation from car to car:

1. Length of the shift lever
2. Distance between the lever's fulcrum points (which dictates the 'throw')
3. The clamped position of the rear shift coupler (dictating where in the opening the shift lever is while in neutral, and how far 'back' 1st/3rd/5th will be)
4. How many threads the front coupler is engaged into the forward shifter rod (also dictating neutral and how far forward Reverse/2nd/4th will be.
5. Wear in the bushings of the rear shift coupler and in the front ball cup

I think Porsche's solution to all the variation was to make a bigass opening and corresponding shifter boot that covered a wide variety of variables. That said, for custom applications I like the idea of a smaller shift opening to free up real estate on the lower insert for custom things.

The hatswitch has a 2.15 mm shaft with a D-shaped flat on it. The Porsche HVAC **** has a rectangular flat hole for the shaft. So I need an adapter that fits a stock HVAC **** on one end, and has a hollow 2.15 mm hole in the other end, with a setscrew to tighten it on the flat of the hatswitch shaft. Not sure how deep the slot in the HVAC **** is, and I need to measure how far below the surface of the lower shifter insert the hatswitch would mount, it comes with small barrel offsets tapped for M3 machine screws.

Jerry Feather

Rob, I think this is in your paygrade. First figure out where and how the little switch is to be mounted, then mount it. Then take the HVAC **** and drill out the back of it to the diameter of just slightly larger than the width of the center slot, but not through the ****. Use your Mill or your drill press, carefully.

Then obtain or make a short length of ABS plastic rod the diameter of the hole you drilled into but not through the ****. Make it as long as it needs to be so that the **** will end up at the correct distance from the face of what you are mounting it to, or longer for now. Then drill a hole in the end of the rod the diameter of the little switch shaft. Then wax the shaft of the switch. Put some ABS glue into the hole drilled into the rod and slip it over the shaft on the switch. Let it set for a day or two so much of the MEK will evaporate and the ABS that is left takes a pretty good set. Then pull the rod off the shaft and let it cure some more, maybe several days.

Then decide how long the rod needs to be and cut it to length so that the **** will end up in the correct position when it is placed over the rod. Use Super glue and glue the **** over the rod with the switch and the **** in the correct relative position such as both in the off position.

Done.

Alan

Or just buy a plastic **** with a set screw brass insert and break the plastic **** off the insert then JB weld the insert into your Porsche **** (after you drill it out).

Challenges - you likely need to build up the center of the **** with JB weld first - there isn't a lot of material there. Then you need to drill out accurately the center of the **** to accept the insert - including for the set screw - and then JB weld the insert in place without gumming up the setscrew. You need to be careful - but it is certainly doable. I have modified a few Porsche ***** this way.

e.g. http://www.surplus-electronics-sales...483083d41119cd

Alan

Nicole

Very cool!

When will mere mortals be able to get something like this?

Jerry Feather

Hi Nicole. I did this thread primarily with you in mind, and others similarly situated. I think the end result, or conclusion that I sort of reached myself, is that there is really no inbetween point that stands out as a place for me to stop working on the conversion and then send it out for someone else to finish and put in their own 928. Even doing most of the conversion in someone else's console here and sending that back with it all worked up appears to leave a lot for someone to do, as demonstrated clearly by Rob E. What he has had to do to finish this up for his car almost amazes me.

So, when I can put the time into another one of these, just what do you have in mind? Try to put your response into the context of what I have tried to show in this thread. In other words, just how much of this do you think you are in a position to do yourself?

Jerry Feather

The reason I went to the trouble to develop the plastic forming tooling to make the upper and the lower inserts, aside from the mere fact that I thought I could, and I had already made one of them for the replacement lower trim piece I thought would be worth while, was to make this aspect of the flush conversion more repeatable. Had that not been a goal, it would have been much less effort to have simply made the inserts individually by cutting and gluing them up to meet my own needs.

ABS plastic is very interesting to work with. It dissolves readily in MEK. In fact the $6 small can of ABS glue you buy at the hardware store in the plumbing section is simply ABS plastic dissolved in MEK. AT this point I am making my own ABS glue by dissolving some captured shavings in MEK in the near empty glue can. Each time I do that it saves me almost all of the $6 a new can costs.

The point of this is that just about anyone can glue two pieces of ABS plastic together. The MEK in the glue dissolves the parent material some and the ABS in the glue joins in and the resulting joint ends up, when the MEK is all evaporated, as simply a weld. Given that and the claim that there is some kind of "crowd" of do it yourselfers out there in the 928 world it would seem to me that anyone who actually can fabricate something out of the inserts I might provide in some raw condition can almost as simply fabricate their own inserts. No one that I know of has bothered, or maybe even been able, to do that.

At the other extreme of this program are three 928s that I have done as much of the conversion as I can here in their consoles and sent them out. Out of those three, the first has totally disabled the car, the second is waiting for the owner to discover that there is actually some adjustment in the location of the 5 speed shifter, and the only one that has been completed by the owner is Rob's as shown so nicely above in this thread. Rob's was completed by him. The other two were too reliant on outside technical help to install and finish up and even that help apparently is incapable of the fabrication needed or even the wrenching needed to make it work.

So my question to all of those who have expressed an interest in having me send something very basic relating to this conversion is, what have you done on your own? If you think you can trim, cut, glue, and shape the raw inserts that you hope I might provide, why haven't you simply made your own? Do you have any of the following tools and equipment:

band saw, or scroll saw
heat gun
drill motor
drill bits including unibits
disc sander
belt sander
router and bits
spring clamps (a lot of them)
a source for ABS plastic sheet

In addition, having a milling machine helps me a lot; and might be used nicely to cut out the openings in the face of the upper inserts, if I were making them with the cut and glue method. Anyone else have one of those? How would you make the openings?

BC

Rob is a cut above. Sometimes, in my weak moments, I feel like I am pretty good at all this, but then I see rob do things.... It brings me back down to earth.

Rob Edwards

Having finally gotten around to installing Jerry's console after only 10 months, I have the following comments.

1). I bought a spare airbag console, HVAC head, AC/lock bar, center vent, shift boot, and CarPC and sent them to Jerry. That allowed me to keep driving the GTS while he made the necessary modifications and incorporated those components into the final project.

1a). In that 10 months, there were 9 months and 25 days when I wasn't working on the flush console install.

2. I received the following bits the day after Christmas:



Note the HVAC head and AC/lock bar already mounted in place. Had I ‘just’ wanted to install it in the car and not geek out on adding all the other functionality I wanted, I could have had it up and running in a weekend, I did no meaningful fabrication or modification other than having to clearance the shifter boot frame a bunch to be able to reach all gears, and adding 999 652 369 12 pins to connect Jerry’s HVAC pigtail to the factory plug.

3. The CarPC is wired like any car stereo- 14 pin pigtail with switched/constant power, ground, remote amp, and 4 pairs of speaker wires. I put spade lugs on the pigtail and plugged it into the factory radio power connector, and could have used the onboard amps to power speakers. I made life more complicated by incorporating the sharkwoofer, but anyone with a sub and speakers already in the car who has ever wired in a new car stereo could have it up and running in a few hours.

4. I did add some stuff in the glovebox (A carnetix USB hub, a WBO2, and the sharktuner) just for fun, all that wiring is relatively straightforward. I used a bunch of posi-taps in order to not damage (too much…) any of the original wiring, and three Add-a-fuses to get switched power to everything so nothing kills the battery. Still trying to figure out how to momentarily keep the ST2 powered during cycling of the ignition switch.

Spaghetti warning (everything is cleaned up and better dressed now):



5. Look at the plastic forming and upholstery work on the upper and lower inserts- Jerry likes to say that anyone can glue ABS together, but I can’t do what he did. I could probably have spent 10 years practicing, but I’d A) be brain-damaged from all the MEK fumes, and B), the end result would have looked like my 2nd grade popsicle stick dioramas…

The fitment and attention to detail is just outstanding. It’s easy for talented guys to say this stuff is easy, it’s not easy:

Lower insert- Compound curves, radiused corners, reinforcement strips along the edges. The panel’s dimensions are such that it’s a slight interference fit (you have to ‘bow’ it ever so slightly to get it inserted), and the panel gaps are consistent all around. Perfect.



And just a little bit of forming work for the shifter boot and rear A/C *****….



Upper insert: Take a stock center console and cut out the guts.



Fabricate another non-flat, radiused curve upper console faceplate, mate the center vent duct guts, reinforce, upholster.



Complex topography much? And yet it fits perfectly, the center vent duct lines up, and the flap and the microswitch still operate.





6. I have been in touch with Jerry on and off when I have found time to work on this and have burned up a lot of his time in communicating back and forth. I am embarrassed how little I actually paid Jerry for his effort as I can’t imagine how much time this ended up taking. I’d like to believe that subsequent consoles could be done more efficiently from what was learned but the pics above say there’s still a lot of craftsmanship going on, especially if everyone wants a different set of things in a different place.

BC

Can someone explain how the bots are getting through?

Jerry Feather

Bot? I was about to say point well taken. At least someone is paying attention.

BC

It was the beginning of your own sentence (or that of Rob's) regurgitated.

Jerry Feather

It is the first complete sentence in this thread. It seems apropo to my current thoughts about this conversion.