When I got over to my parents' house I couldn't get the Camaro in reverse. The last few days it has been hard to get into reverse, with the gear shifter pushing further left each time. This has happened before. There is an L-shaped plate that mounts under the transmission and holds the shifter linkage. It previously had a crack in it. I took it off and, because this was before I had a welder, had a friend weld it up. It seemed to have broken again. Fortunately, I was barely able to pull out of where I was parked, but I did have to drive behind the house and through the yard. I was hoping to get a fender or two finished today so I was a little let down at the though of having to fix this issue, but it is January and today was the first day it hadn't rained in days and it was also a record breaking 70 degrees outside, so if this piece was going to break it certainly picked a very convenient day to do so. At least I was able to get all the pieces I need moved over to the barn so now no matter what the weather decides to do I can continue to make progress, which is good because the entire next week is forcast to have rain.
Here's the plate. As you can see it is bent to the left. The linkage bolts to the left side of this plate and when you move the shifter left into reverse, which takes quite a bit of force, it puts pressure against the bracket which eventually causes it to break. This this is an absolute pain to remove simply because there is very little room to get a wrench positioned to take the bolts out of the bottom mount. It requires getting the wrench on the bolt and moving it about 2 or 3 millimeters and then switching the wrench around each time to progress further.
When I took it off the crack was evident. It is painted gold because the last time I had it off gold paint was all I had and since it can barely be seen even when under the car it didn't really matter. April was driving the car daily at the time so it was a joke between us.
I was hoping to not have to cut the pieces in half to keep all the holes in alignment, but after viewing the damage I realized it had to be done. I put an X on the two sides that go together to keep them oriented where they should be. The worst thing I could do, and it wouldn't be the first time, is to finally get it finished and realized I welded it together backwards.
I made sure everything was square and tacked it together
At first I couldn't get a good weld at all. I couldn't get it to stop popping and burning up the wire. It was a pretty windy day so I upped the pressure on the gas but it didn't help. I was really beginning to question my welding abilities and began to consider that I may need to go back and check the quality of the welds I'd done on the '37, but then I remembered that this welder likes to have more volts than the chart on the lid suggests. Once I turned it up everything was fine.
I cut out everything that was cracked. There is no wonder that the plate cracked the first time because it was originally shaped as you can see it below but without the metal piece I have added here. When my friend fixed it the first time he added the piece shown below. It had all cracked back out so I cut it out and decided to add some back where he had put it.
I went back under the car and slide the piece back in place to get some measurements. Seeing I had just enough room I decided to add some more support. I dug this triangle piece out of my scrap metal pile and cut it to fit.
And after some grinding, primer and a fresh coat of beautifully tacky gold paint, it was finished. Not very pretty but at least I'll have reverse. Considering the stress this piece is under and the fatigue the metal has already endured I'm not 100 percent positive this piece won't break again. I'll see how long it lasts and next time I may have to redesign an entire new piece from scratch.
