Here are the pics of the QT mechanical shift mod.

[porkchop]

Sorry to all those that were waiting for them that I didn't get them up sooner. I was going to change the cable hook up. This was the first one I tried and it worked great so I am not in a hurry to do it yet. I am also selling the whole t-case right now so I am not worried about it. It does work really good though, both in and out of e-drive. I thought that the "S" shaped piece of steel would bend but it didn't. The cable hook up is not the key to it though. The key is in the shifter itself and how you cut the old diaphram to make the new shifter. So here they are. I hope they help someone get on the right track to try it themselves and to improve on the idea.
http://www.fortunecity.com/silverstone/fuel/62/id49.htm

[nightflyers]

Thanks for the pic's PC.

Last night I started thinking about this while I was working on one of my robots at work. Since I will soon have on board air, I was thinking about a pnumatic shifter. I could modify the diaphram the same way you did and run a small piston to shift in and out of e-drive. I will have to beef the mount up where you mounted the cable and fabricate a piston mount. All I would need to do than that is get a pnumatic shifter handle (to change the input of the piston to be pressurized), a small inline regulator and pressure check valves to release the air pressure from the piston.

It is very much like the set up we use on our robots at work to open and close the clamps on them. It may be a little more expensive to do it this way, but that is what happens when I think.

Any thought on this?

[porkchop]

WOW! So how much air pressure would it take to shift the piston? That sounds like it would work but like you said it is going to cost. I am sure you can do it.

What the robots for at work?

[nightflyers]

I'm not sure exactly how much air pressure it would take. I'm thinking it should not be much at all. That is where the adjustable regulator comes in. Start low and work up.

As for the cost, I can get the stuff pretty cheap. Less than the cost of the new mile marker replacement. The only problem should be set up. Getting the travel of the piston to match the movement of the shifter and not to ram it in to hard. The idea still needs work. If I start out the same way you did the the idea doesn't work, I can easily change it to a cable operated system.

As for the robots at work. I work for a printer. Everything is automated. After the paper is printed on it goes through the folder with cuts it, folds it and lays the book on a conveyor. The books get fed into a stacker which stacks the books into 4ft piles (logs), straps it and sends it up an elevator to another conveyor. The network of conveyors bring the logs out to the palletizer, which scans the strap and sends it to the proper robot. The robots pick the logs up, rotate them and stacks them on skid to be sent to the bindery.

Most likely more than you wanted to know. My job is to keep everything running smooth and fix it when it breaks.