DIY 4 Ball Shift Knob

[BigV]

Happy Valentine's Day!

You know those gifts for yourself that you give to others? This is one of those gifts. My girlfriend's (seriously, we're gonna have to come up with a better term here... let's us think about this, k?) vehicle has a manual transmission. And the shift knob has come loose. It was rattly loose before I met her actually. I tried fixing it and shimming it and it just wasn't working. Every time I shifted from first to second gear the damn knob would come off in my hand, usually spoiling the shift, my movement in traffic, depleting my reserve of colorful language, etc. So, I decided to make a shift knob for my own satisfaction her and give it to her for Valentine's Day. Here's my brief construction journal. Side note, most of these pictures were taken with my backup camera, and I am not happy with the macro results, or the white balance. That's why you were mistaken about the 2 ball. Sorry.

First of all, I called around to find individual pool balls. I got a 4 ball, it's PURPLE, one of her school's colors. I found one at a local game equipment supplier for a good price. I brought it home and secured it in my drill press vise. I didn't think it would move around much, and I really didn't want to mar the surface, that's why you see the towel here.

I picked a spot to drill that would let the "4" on the driver's side be prominently displayed. It turned out to be a little off the center of the circle of the bottom "4". I did try to drill straight into the center of the ball.


I read a lot about how to do this and the shift levers described had either threaded or splined ends. I ignored the threaded ones since her vehicle's shift lever is splined. That was kind of too bad, since using a standard hex nut built into the ball would have made things a lot simpler. Everything I read about this process warned to GO SLOW. That meant slow drilling and starting small, and working up to larger and larger bits. I knew I was going to redrill this hole so I didn't care precisely how many 32nds it was. I just picked a smallish drill and got started.


The balls are made out of some material that has flecks of red and green on the inside Here's a shot of the tailings from a vein of red. Weird. Also, I thought they might be ... pressurized or something. One time when I was drilling, I'd work the bit down, then back up, down with a little more pressure, up again, just taking small bites like you would normally do, I backed the drill all the way out of the hole and there was a POOOF and a cloud of ball dust coughed out of the hole. It was very surprising. I later figured out that the hole was collecting the dust and shavings, but not getting them all backed out via the twist of the drill. When I backed the whole drill out, the hot air found a vent and whoosh it all came out. Working faster would have prevented this kind of thing, fortunately, there was no harm done, but it was a surprise.

This is what the first hole looked like after I cleaned it up. Shiny!!