Shifting My Stance

The shifter ended up being a pretty huge pain.  The shifter plate that mounts to the transmission had to be modified and part of the floorboard had to be trimmed away to get the shifter to mount and work correctly.  I had to modify and create my own parts to make the shifter attachments mount at the correct angles.  This is a common issue with parts that are ordered from companies that say they are "made to fit."

As you can see, that's not going to fit.

Back to the old scrap angle iron

And before too long it looked like this

And here's a couple shots that April came out and took of the shifter linkage being measured. This was just one of the many, many times that was necessary to make it work properly.

Apparently, April believes that since I take all the pictures, I'm not in them enough, so she caught an action shot of one of the many situps completed in the movement between above and below the car.

The angle was close, but it was a bit too much for smooth operation.  I had to take about an 1/8 inch out of the inside spacer I'd made.  The difference can best be seen by looking at how far the end of the bolt sticks out past the nut before and after shortening the spacer.  You can also notice in the second picture that I rounded out the edges of the top of the mounting plate.

That gave the shifter a much smoother operation, with less binding between Park and Reverse.  You can see where I had to trim a small part of the floor.  Fortunately, it was small enough to still be covered by the same floorboard-plate mounting sheet metal, so I will not have to change the bolt hole locations for the plate that mounts in the floor.

Here it is in it's completed form.  Shifting between the gears finally has the right about of resistance and it doesn't bind up.  I had to go back and make some small changes to get it just right, but as for now all the bugs seem to be worked out of this part.