Home made link tool.

[Iowa crawler]

Quick Sunday morning project. I have two crawlers to make links for. And I decided to remember to make a tool that drives the link onto the rod.

I used a 5/16 driver. It had a magnet unit but it was quickly removed when I cut the slot .

You want to pick two of the six points at 6 and 12. Mark make them on the outside and use a Dremel tool to cut the slot. For the link and hold the ball between two flat sides.

Quick clean up and polish then a coat of gun blue to finish it up.

 

[WickedFog]

Very nice! I 3d printed a couple different sizes.

 

[olds97_lss]

That's nice! One thing I always have a hard time with is ball ends. My hands are getting more arthritic by the day and those are some of the tougher things for me to deal with. Has gotten to the point that I use a tap first.

I had a busted MIP wrench that I heated and bent to use as a hook so I could use it to screw my rod ends on/off just using the ball. Puts a bit of strain on the ball... but gets the job done.

 

[WickedFog]

With these link twisters I made, I was able to fully assembly all the links and install all the ends for the shock shafts for the Ryft in less than 5 minutes. A job I actually used to despise worse than my ex, I now actually enjoyed. I want more links to assemble now!

 

[Iowa crawler]

That was ridicules. Why did I not make this tool a year ago. Ten links in five minutes with no effort.

 

[WickedFog]

That was ridicules. Why did I not make this tool a year ago. Ten links in five minutes with no effort.

Yeah, yours looks like the one I made, but better. It is a game changer. I didn't even have to use anything but my hand to hold the link to spin the ends on. The link would spin a little in my hand, but the end was spinning faster