Jerry Feather

It may not seem like much, but it takes a lot of time. Here are a few pictures of the process of making the little lenses for the shifter position indicator lites that might work into some of these conversions.

Dang, none of these focuses at the right place. The first is trying to show a projection of about two inches or so of plastic rod out of the three jaw lathe chuck.

The second shows that I have milled the half inch rod down to about 450 thousandths.

The third is trying to show that I have turned about a quarter of an inch of the end down to about 300 Thousandths.

The fourth show that I am dirlling the end of the lense with a numbered drill to about 123 thou. and about 3/16 or so deep.

The last shows me cutting the end of the rod off with what is the first step of the lense body.

What I have to do next is set up the lathe and then turn the lens projection down to about an aighth of an inch high and then turn the corners down to about a 45 degree angle to reduce the sharpness.

What I hope to do is make about a dozen sets of thes lenses and then place them in a milled rack so that the lazer guy can put the initial or number in the top of each that I can fill with black paint.

Jerry Feather

Here is my progress so far with these lenses.

The first shows the lenses that I have started in the upper left of the tray and a few that are finished at the other end.

The second two are trying to show the lenses in place, but there is still a focus problem that seems to be more function of the flash than the focus.

Jerry Feather

Here are some samples of how the lites might look.

I turned the flash off to see if that would help, but not much. I am planning to use red for the park position, blue for reverse, white for neutral, green for drive, orange for third and yellow for second.

On the other hand, if I get the lenses printed with the letter designation, I suppose one could use the same color for all of them, and the color could be buyers choice.

These pictures kind of show how they might look, although in real life they show up much better than in these pictures. The only drawback is that using white opaque plastic, the red shows up kind of stark pink.

Jerry Feather

Its interesting how the lens shows up white even when the colored lite is shining through. Here is a real close-up showing how the lens really looks with the light on. It actually turns the lens the color of the light, even though that is not how they look in the other pictures. Its out of fucus, but I had to get it that close in order to get it not to show the white of the lens with the lite on.

Dictys

Jerry,

Do you intend those little lenses to sit flush with the leather or raised.

IMHO flush with numbers would be the best.

Mark

Jerry Feather

Hi Mark. That is certainly a reasonable suggestion. However, what I have found so far is that in order to get the top of the lens to glow somewhat evenly it needs to have a certain amount of "volume" of plastic and needs to have to LED mounted fairly low in the lens. Nevertheless, what I will try, based on your suggestion, is to make some of these with a much shallower lens above the leather although still not quite flush, and perhaps make the stem of the lens larger so the top will have a better opportunity to glow fully rather than leaving the thin edges dim. (I hope this makes sense.)

I am not sure how I could make these actually completely flush with the leather and still keep this aspect of this project simple enough to be economical. What do you have in mind for mounting these lenses completely flush. I'm thinking that the best I might be able to do is simply make them project above the leather much less, but still about a 32nd of an inch. With this method I'm using I simply push the lenses through the holes from the top and they are held in by friction with the leather. To mount them completely flush will require them to be installed from underneath while being held in some other kind of assembly. I'll give that some more thought.

I'll give the shallower lenses a try in the next couple of days and post what I come up with.

By the way, I received the little micro switches that I ordered. They look like they will work out pretty well for the method to turn these lites on in operation. Now I have to develop some means to mount them and adjust them to get the correct placement in relation to the shifter shaft which is what will be activating them.

Thanks for your suggestion.

Jerry

Jerry Feather

I think my brain works a lot like most. When I have been thinking and working on something for a time in one frame of mine, I find myself being kind of negative about some alternative that might present itself, and tend to discount it. I think you can see that going on in my prevous post in response to Mark.

Then after my brain starts working on the new idea it seems to loosen up a bit and give more consideration to the new idea, especially when the new one has some good merit. I think you might see that in my previous post also.

Then, after I have had a chance to go through a lot of design considerations and concepts, I find myself embracing the new idea more fully. That is kind of where I find myself with Mark's idea at this point.

After I made my previous post this mornig I had to travel out of town about 85 miles and back and while driving I had a great chance to do some development in my mind over what Mark has suggested. I think I can approach these shift indicator lites for the Auto cars in a manner suggested by Mark, and find that it might work well within my capabilities and not add too much time in the fabrication, althought some. The manner of working his concept into this project fits within my original plans for a lite/switching mechanism pretty well, and I can put the lites into the switching member and then install the whole thing into the lower trim piece from underneath.

Actually, I am not entirely convinced that making these lites very flush is esthetically the best way to go. However, I think that mounting them from underneath could work very well and could be nearly flush or not too far above flush so as to be more pleasing. Or they could be made to be well above flush as an alternative, much like they appear now. From a theoretical standpoint I think Mark's idea will work well, with some concern about how the leather will react to pushing a lens through the leather lined hole from underneath. If I can form the leather around the holes and glue it down securely, I think it will work.

It may take longer than an day or two, but I'll try to work this concept up and see what you think of it.

Jerry

Jerry Feather

Well, Mark, I didn't get to work much on the flush lite concept you have suggested. When I took the lower trim piece out of my silver S4 to try the new flush version in it, an auto, I found that although the trim piece kind of fit, it was a little off. I found that my measurements of the shifter location was about an eighth of an anch off, left to right, and is a little bit short. Actuallly I was expecting it to be a bit short in front, but it is more short in the rear.

I decided that I need to lick my calf over a little.

What I did was rebuild the basic form so that the left side of the shifter opening is moved left a bit so that the shifter will be centered, and opened it up a quarter inch in front and a half inch in the rear. In front the shifter boot was getting its panties in a bunch, so to say, and needs a little more space. Even at that I am going to have to redesign the shifter boot some to get it to not bunch up so much between the shifter shaft and the trim piece in front.

Then, of course, I made a new form to push the shifter recess in the proper amount. I have formed one, but it is cooling as I write, so I don't have a picture yet. Fortunately, the dozen or so of these pieces that I have formed already were not trimmed so I think I am going to be able the simply reform them. This ABS plastic has a good memory and at something over about 260 degrees it goes back to its original form and can then be reformed as if for the first time. I'll see if I right about that when I take this one out of the form later.

I also made the male form to push the 5-speed shifter recess down in for those versions of the lower trim piece, so when I get the auto pieces reformed I'll be able to start some of those versions of this conversion

Maybe tomorrow I'll get some more progress on the flush auto shift indicator lite part of this project. I'll have to take some more of the center console apart to do that I think.

See ya later.

Jerry Feather

Jerry Feather

I took the first reformed lower trim piece out of the machine and took a picture of it next to the previously formed piece. Actually I took two pictures. Here they are.

You can barely see the original strike-off lines from the original formed shifter recess in the new larger one. Of course, that will not be visible in the finished product.

Jerry

Bill Ball

Jerry:

I completely understand how suggestions at this point can really throw you off. I do like Mark's "flush" idea, but it seemed to me that it would require you to rework the mold to put in a recess for the lens. And then you'd have to worry about the leather edge too. Same with mounting from below. Tough one. If you figure out how to accomodate that, you're a genius. Most modern cars just have printed PRNDL indicator plate next to the shifter - nothing fancy. These indicator lights and a system to coordinate them with the shifter are probably overkill.

Mrmerlin

I would opt for no lights at all its just one more thing to distract you from the taks at hand Driving.
I try to remove or reduce the surrounding lights as much as possible so the pod lights are the most visiible

Jerry Feather

That will certainly be an option.

Jerry

Jerry Feather

And, of course, that will be to only option for the five speed cars.

Jerry Feather

Bill, you might be right about overkill. Nevertheless, now is a good time for optional ideas to come up especially about how to finish this lower trim piece. There isn't much more that can be done to the other one, the upper insert, but there is some space available around the shifter in both versions of the lower trim piece to consider different configurations and components, within reason, of course.

Jerry

Nicole

I wouldn't care to have those lights - I only look at the indicator in the dash anyway.