The saga of the shift coupler continues. The rear coupler is off and rebuilt. I compared it to the new ones available over the market and determined that not only did the other couplers not look to be able to promise fault free driving for years to come, some of them were just crap.
Take a look...
Far left is the original, here mocked up by me and nearly ready to be installed. The metal on this one is so much nicer than the repops that I've decided to rebuild it using stainless hardware, nylock nuts, nylon washers, and stainless spacers, all wrapped around a sandwich of black industrial silicone adhesive. In this picture, the nuts are not tight yet, and the adhesive has not been added. I'm confirming the spacing between the two grub screws to the other couplers in the shot. Which are left to right, a poly-bush coupler for hi-stress installations like drag racing for $9 plus shipping, a Brazilian repop with new grub screws, $17 shipped, and a repop from CIP1 online, dirt cheap and looking the part.
No wonder I'm fixing the original.
To get it on though, I've got to get the mid shift rod to slide more forward toward the front of the bus, and to do that it needs to slide up next to the front shift rod, which means the front coupler needs to come off first. Of course it was a rusty hunk of 46 year old poo so I chopped the thing off with the Dremel.
Look at the rust on that grub screw inside the coupler. That thing would have never unscrewed.
Now comes getting the two shift rods separated. I may have to hit it with the butane torch because soaking in PB Blaster for a week isn't breaking it free.
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