Im trying to build my custom short shaft with automotive shift knob.. but amazon failed and never shipped my shift knob. it was supposed to be here Thursday with prime. So now it is re-ordered and got a free month of prime. Hopefully it arrives today or tomorrow so I can try and build it.
Oh and if anyone was wondering.. you can take the top (silver part) of the stock knob off and put weight inside it. There is a phillips screw you can get to by taking it off the shaft and putting a smaller precision screwdriver inside and unscrewing it. I found out because mine fell apart haha.
Edit - the shift knob arrived.. I present the $17 short shift kit. - I am planning to cover the H pattern red mapping on the top of the knob.. it looks nice but I am not willing to perfect the exact position for it to line up correctly when switching back to H mode from sequential.
1. m6-1.0 x100mm bolt
2. 6 pack of m6-1.0 nuts ( I used 4 )
3. a pen and something to cut it up with.
4. a cheap amazon universal shift knob (the one I picked happens to be all aluminum and hollow so I did not need to shorten the bolt)
http://www.amazon.com/ESUMIC®-Automotive-Speed-Shift-Shifter/dp/B00NFF2PC8/ref=sr_1_471?s=automotive&ie=UTF8&qid=1439499953&sr=1-471&keywords=universal+shift+knob
Tools - drill with large drill bit (drill bit just smaller around than the m6 nut a the tips) gloves, hammer, and two 10mm wrenches.
I measured the height (got it wrong twice forgot to check 7th gear slot) this is where the bottom nut of the jam tightened nuts needs to be and marked with fine point sharpie. Make sure to measure based on how deep the plastic insert goes into the shift knob.
I had to drill out one of the plastic inserts to be slightly too small for the m6 nuts. This is what the glove is for to protect my hand while holding the insert as I drilled out. *The plasic insert goes on the bolt then I thread the nuts on the bolt and jam locked them into place (jam locking is just tightening them against each other with two wrenches). I then used a hammer and one of the 10mm wrenches to force the plastic insert onto the m6 nuts that were jam locked into place on the m6 bolt.. **Put one of the extra nuts on the bolt threads to protect them, you do not want to hit threads with a hammer. M6 nut edges are sharp enough to cut into the insert so that it it solid and the insert does not turn - that is why the insert was only drilled out so far that the m6 nuts would only fit with brute force.
Cut the plastic pen tube to be too long for tightening down the bolt into the shifter. Then slip it on and tighten the bolt down into the shifter without the knob. The bolt x-head top made it easy to tighten it down against the pen tube so it was snug.
Get the knob and tighten it down on the plastic insert - it will get tight. - If the knob is getting to tight and you are turning the bolt into the shifter smashing the pen tube - then remove the shaft from the shifter and jam the two extra nuts together on the end of the shaft and put a wrench on them so you can hold the bolt with the extra jammed nuts while tightening down the knob on the plastic insert. My shift knob goes pretty far over the plastic insert - that is were I messed up the measuring as the shift knob bottom edge would hit the h gate plate and I could not put it in 7th or reverse. - if you removed the shaft form the shifter now obviously put it back on which would be easy now that the knob is on - tighten it down snug pinching the pen tube.
If you care the orrientation of the knob.. you can cut the pen tube longer or shorter to get this correct.. this is why I said to leave it a bit long.. no need to completely bottom out the bolt into the shifter, but you do want it to thread in pretty far.
Only improvement I need.. the pen tube is a little soft.. you can see in the first picture above the bottom is starting to flair out inside the shifter .. but I raced with it for a good while this morning and it did not budge.
Used in sequential mode this morning worked great...