shift rod
shift rod
I have a problem with my shift rod on my 66. When I bought the car it had a Scat trigger shifter in it, which I decided to replace with an original shifter. I could not get the shifter to work right. It didn't seem to want to engage all the gears, and reverse was completely absent. After playing with it for a couple hours, I removed the shifter again to check the bushing. I noticed the bushing inside the tunnel was in pieces, so I removed the shift rod. After pulling the shift rod out, I noticed it was slightly bent. I cannot tell if the bend is supposed to be in the rod, or is it supposed to be perfectly straight? The bend looks natural, but I cannot tell for sure. Anybody have any experience with this?
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fatalifeaten
- Senior Member
- Posts: 512
- Joined: Sun Feb 03, 2008 12:05 am
- Location: The 480
It does have a bend to it. I tried to find a pic of one online but struck out. Wolfsburg west has one on their site that only goes up to '64 but it gives you a general idea of what they look like.
With the Scat shifter in, did you have all gears? Can you manually work the gear change and feel it go into gear with the car off? May just be an adjustment issue or a missing parts issue. Do you have the reverse lockout plate, and if so, is it on correctly? they only go one way. I had a very similar issue with mine. Came with a Chinese Empi shifter in it, and when I put the stock one back in it was a nightmare to get all the gears and get everything shifting correctly. You're adjusting fractions of an inch to go from having 3rd and 4th only to having all gears (as an example). Once I got mine dialed in, I took a silver sharpie and scribed around the shifter base under the carpet so I knew where "good" was in case I needed to pull the shifter for work later. When I changed to my Scat drag fast (which I suspect is what you have), took 10 minutes and 2 trips around the block to get it dialed in perfect.
With the Scat shifter in, did you have all gears? Can you manually work the gear change and feel it go into gear with the car off? May just be an adjustment issue or a missing parts issue. Do you have the reverse lockout plate, and if so, is it on correctly? they only go one way. I had a very similar issue with mine. Came with a Chinese Empi shifter in it, and when I put the stock one back in it was a nightmare to get all the gears and get everything shifting correctly. You're adjusting fractions of an inch to go from having 3rd and 4th only to having all gears (as an example). Once I got mine dialed in, I took a silver sharpie and scribed around the shifter base under the carpet so I knew where "good" was in case I needed to pull the shifter for work later. When I changed to my Scat drag fast (which I suspect is what you have), took 10 minutes and 2 trips around the block to get it dialed in perfect.
Thank you for the feedback. I was finally able to get the rod back in the car, but it was quite a challenge. I didn't realize how many tubes and lines there are in there for the rod to hang up on. It took several attempts and a lot of swearing on my part, but I eventually got it in. The shifter that I bought came with the spring and the lockout plate which took a bit of adjusting, but I think I have all gears now. I will get it running this weekend and take it for a spin around the block. Hopefully it will work properly.