Jeep Slip Yoke/Shackle bolt Tiltover Mast

May 18, 2014

Jeep Slip Yoke/Shackle bolt Tiltover Mast

Slip Yoke Shackle Bolt Tilt-over mast

Special thanks and acknowledgement to my Uncle (Asif Rasheed) for all his guidance, patience and help in construction

This is not a set of step-by-step instructions but this might give you some ideas for building your own tilt-over mast. Click on the pictures to view original
Had a 22ft GI pipe pole for as antenna mast for my 2m and HF inverted vee setup. The maintenance on the 2m antenna meant that I needed to pull out & push back the pole from within the rebar loops protruding from my water tank thus making the mast assembly and dis-assembly a nightmare for one man :). Wanted something simple yet strong as have had storm winds reaching 125+km/h, so to do maintenance on the antennas and mast if and when required easily. The search for a solution started and the web provided it with many different tilt-over masts/towers which were all ground mounted. The idea was there but I had another unique problem. The mast was to be mounted on roof (concrete), except the two re-bar loops protruding out of the water tank, I had nothing else to mount it with vertically and didn't want to drill or grout the tilt-over base :).

Now that the general idea is the design was in my mind, I started looking though the scrap metal/garage items I had on me to see if I could make something out of it. I didnot want to purchase new material as I had a lot of scrap metal and other items inhouse. On searching the garage, I found the following which would make the design in my head practical.

My Jeep's old Slip Yoke
A shackle bolt/nut

A 2x2 16gauge square pipe

12gauge metal strips

And some nuts/botls and misc items. Now that I had all what was required in terms of material, I needed to get it all hooked up but wait.... I dont have a workshop :P....

My uncle (Asif Rasheed) a mechanical engineer by trade has his own workbench with a lot of professional equipment so I requested his help and am much obliged for it as I could have not done this without him.

Some glimpses of his professional workbench

back to the build, first started with the slip yoke and the pipe, they were a perfect fit this the slip yoke went into the pipe and got welded

Weld grinded

The hinge part 1 is ready

The hinge part 2 in making

We were so tired as a storm came in thus the construction pictures stopped and work went into 5th gear. It took us 12hrs from scratch to end to make this as we faced some unforseen mechanical issues with the hinge lock straps but at the end it was all ready to be painted and fixed :)