Would you be willing to give up any of your cad or g files maybe some of the prototypes?

 

boy I would love to, but I will have nothing tied back to the reverse engineering that I did. I'm still glad I never sent the first prototype out for someone to try as the legal implications....well you'll find out about that... Eventually when I fire up the foundry again these parts will be turned into something useful. The CAD files and G-code are my redesign of the OEM plastic parts to replicate the shifter function, hence I can't share this information.

I can share that I got price quotes from a couple places for various parts of the assembly and having it made by someone else was not cost effective until you make them in large quantity (I don't remember how may this was as it was far more than the number of people I had interested) not to mention that it requires a large upfront investment and you better be sure that your reverse engineered design works before investing money in this.

You also have to understand that this shifter is much more complicated than a standard **** that's threaded to fit a specific shaft and a good deal of reverse engineering is required. I did this myself, if your paying someone to do this for you then its going to cost you....

 

I'm in (if i can get my sparkplugs out)

 

I was very disappointed when you announced you were abandoning this project. Given the multitutde of aftermarket products on the market I am dismayed that you came to the conclusion the project was flawed due to legal issues. I think I've owned at least a half dozen aftermarket shifters through the years and who knows how much money I've spent on other aftermarket parts. I realize this item and a Hurst shifter are two different items but are they really that different? I don't think you ever posted exactly what the legal issues were concerning your product. I would think the autospring guy and/or Troyer would be more concerned about legal and/or liability issues than yourself. I assume neither is a highly assetted operation. They seem to be sleeping at night... what exactly is the legal issue you continue to write about?

Getting off the bitch horse I need to add that if you just come out and say you just didn't have the money to make it all come together I 'd more readily understand.

 

Hey Broken, how much you want for that box of shifter parts?

 

ackackadak,
One of the roadblocks is copyright and patent issues. Now I never got into this real deep but I did talk about it with my lawyer and had I progressed further it would have been something I would have had to investigate further, but its possible that reverse engineering their design and selling it as your own could set you up for a lawsuit.

Another roadblock is working on this project as an individual, this make you personally liable for any problems that a defective shifter causes. I wasn't willing to put my financial future on the line for a project like that that really wasn't going to be a big money maker.

Also, an automatic transmission shifter has many more safety related functions than a manual trans shifter. Unexpected vehicle movement is the big one and there have been plenty of recalls and court cases on this in the past. There are FMVSS (federal motor vehicle safety standards) which relate the the automatic transmission shifter and its functions, making a billet shifter will get you all mixed up in those.

Obviously there are lots of aftermarket places out there that do make items with potential safety risks, the one difference between these places and me is that I was going to charge an hourly machining rate that made a very complicated shifter assembly affordable to those that really wanted one, those larger places while more efficient have more overhead and other expenses and are probably going to charge $60-$80/hr for their time. Then you have to add to that all the testing that needs to be done to confirm that your redesigned shifter is going to function properly.

As far as money goes, it was never an issue on this project. Now I'm not saying that I had thousands of dollars to throw at it, but if my analysis/work had determined that it was worth doing I would have found the money to make it happen. But then again I wasn't willing to sit on top of thousands of dollars of parts machines by someone else and just hope they sold for less than I paid to have them made and that's why I choose to make the shifters myself in smaller batches once again to keep the costs down and have less of my own money at risk. I would rather be sitting on 11 shifters I made myself and have them not sell, rather than 300 that someone else made for a premium price.

If anyone wants to prove me wrong I'll gladly give credit where credit is due. All you need to do is spend the money and get a shifter from the dealer, reverse engineer it and have some place like www.emachineshop.com make up the parts for you, you assemble them and sell them to all the people who are interested. I do want to say that you will learn a ton by doing a project like this, as I did and its one of the reasons that I don't feel that I wasted my time or money even though I never sold a single shifter.

Sorry Gotbeer, I didn't mean to hijack your thread with all these details

 

Sgt, Pepper.
Sorry none of my work is for sale...... but I'm always looking for new less risky projects, if anyone has an idea feel free to email me.

 

Make an MIRT, I am. Oh you said LESS risky

 

Gotbeer, can you give us an update on the status? I'm interested to see how things work out.

 

I ordered the shifter from my local dealer. Should be in this week. Then I will ship it to them and wait to hear what they have to say.

 

I would definately be intersted in a billet shifter. In the end, it depends on how much it will cost.

 

Gotbeer,
Any progress on the shifter?

 

Guys... I know there's a LOT of interest in this but **DO NOT** let this turn into a group buy... not yet at least.

Remember, to have a 'group buy' at f150online.com, you must first pre-approve it by emailing webmaster@f150online.com with your request.

Thanks.

 

YEAH!!! WHAT HE SAID!!! ( )

Hopefully we will get to that stage in the upcoming New Year. Thanx for help/warning of letting us know what direction to take this once it gets to that point RockPick.