A Tale of Two Hand Throttles

[Barrman]

Now that my home phone is fixed and my dial up working again, I can catch up on progress made over the weekend.

Agengr was over again to work on his truck. In between rain storms, sanding sessions, reloading and painting, we decided to hook up the NOS hand throttles he picked up. This is the style with T H R O T T L E stenciled on the T handle and a ratchet catch depending on which way the handle is turned.

His truck still had the stock pedal linkage. I have the left overs from several add on cruise control kits and we used those parts to make a flexible end that would allow the handle to work and the pedal to be pushed without the handle moving as well. To connect the chain link to the cable, we took a 5/16" x 1" bolt and drilled a 3/32" hole in it. Put the end of the cable through the hole and tightened a bolt on it. Then another cruise control part was looped over the bolt and another nut tightened on to hold it. The pedal end was slipped on behind the cotter pin. Here is what his looks like.



While he was crawling under his dash to install it, I looked through the stuff left and came up with a different way. I found a 3" long cable with a loop at one end and a brass block at the other. I melted the brass off, made another bolt with a hole in it and then put both the free flexible cable end and the handle cable through the same hole going in different directions and tightend a single nut down on them. I had already changed out the linkage on my pedal end to allow a cable to be tightened down on (Thanks again Al, I didn't put a flexible end on the cable from you and broke it.). I just looped the loop over it and used a cotter pin to keep it on. Here is what mine looks like.



We both got done around the same time. We were playing with them checking things out and then went back to painting for him and reloading ammo for me. (I was down to less than 40 rounds of 9mm at one point last week. I got it back up to a livable 360 now) Here is his paint haul for the weekend. Hood, bumper, fording intake, receiver hitch, b/o gaurd and base, horn button and a pile of fasteners.

[gimpyrobb]

Nice Tim! What was wrong with the phone? Not your modem I hope.

[fng]

Gee Tim, wish you'd move up here to Arkansas, like say a couple of blocks away...then I could bring my stuff over and we could work on it.

[Barrman]

No, the modem works great. Thank you again. A consistent 44-48 kbps since I installed it. But, starting last Thursday evening, I had severe noise on the phone and the modem couldn't get a response from the server. I got 14.1 for about 3 minutes at one point, but that was it. Verizon came out as soon as I called them (I called on Thursday and they showed up on Tuesday.) and ran a line across my driveway and yard to bypass my buried line. Hopefully, they will come out and bury it one of these months.

When it comes to hand throttles, I still think the best one I have ever seen is what DP has on his CJ. Aircraft style that allows him to turn it a little at a time and a button in the middle to make huge changes. He was able to sit at some really weird angles at WITC last summer and change his idle to compensate for fuel spilling over. I just kept flooding out at those angles because I only have 2 feet to use at a time.

[gimpyrobb]

Well DP, the torch has been passed, lets see some pics!

[Snuffy]

I'd like to see that as well DP. Throw in the specifics so we can find one!

Snuffy

[Barrman]

His is a NAPA part. He gave me all the details last summer, but I forgot them or lost them.

[kaiser715]

I'll have to hunt up the NAPA part number. Here is one that is similar, though:

http://www.teleflex.com.au/Products.aspx?Series=12

Cost about $50 from NAPA new.

I have since found many applications where you may find a used one. Our '86 Thomas church bus uses the exact same hand throttle. I've seen others on PTO -equiped trucks like dump trucks. Also have seen one on a military generator (big, like 10 or 15k Diesel).

Works well being mounted near the gearshift -- easy to reach up and hit the big red button to take it down to an idle if you get in trouble.

[syzygy]

We use a similar style on most of our fire engines for pumping operations. (The newer ones are going to electronic control with selectable RPM or Pressure modes, presets, etc.) I'll have to take a closer look to see if I can find make/model and figure out how they work. I'll post what I find.