I Cheated And I'm Glad

I have resisted in the past, but I'm getting older and this was probably my last chance to try this.
I'm rebuilding my T90 shift tower, putting new springs and detent balls in it. For the life of me I could not get the new springs and balls in the shift rods. I have done this job in the past, but they were always used parts. this time they were new. After way too much time and frustration I did the unthinkable, I cheated by grinding down the square end of the shift rod to provide a beveled section to slip over the ball while tapping it in.
What a difference it made. No functional damage done to the asm, no strength lost. It should of been done to those shafts in the beginning.

How many of you have done the same thing?

 

I do stuff like that all the time. Its not cheating if it was made cheaply to begin with when they omitted a step and sold it unfinished. Another idea is that instead of finish machining the part, they had an installation fixture.

 

Like the old pre- Model T days, when everything was hand-fitted.

I once worked on an early fire pump where each nut was numbered and matched to it's individual bolt.

 

Yep. cheaper to have an assembly fixture than to add another machining process to every single part.

 

Overheard at a Jeep show : " I think Willys invented the unibit" I won't fault you, sometimes cheating is fun. Wait...

 

got the job done , no problem
as the saying goes
work smarter not harder


you know the thread title . had me go to left field for a moment