Greetings! After the recent excitement of my youngest daughter's wedding & reception, I've returned to the daily excitement of the Desert Classics hot rod shop. This is an excitement that I can control, nobody is going to make me dance with the bride in front of hundreds of thousands of guests. Not that I was opposed to dancing with my beautiful daughter, it's just the thought of family & friends analyzing my fabled footwork.
Gary's '51 Chevy coupe is coming along quite nicely. With the shop engine bolted into the chassis with the 4-speed transmission attached I was able to make the modifications to the floor to make room for the shifter. I measured (twice) to see just where the shifter should come through and, after cutting an opening in the carpeting, drilled two 1" holes in the transmission tunnel. A peek through the opening showed me that my measurements were right on the money. Unusual for me. I opened the hole in the tunnel with a cut-off wheel and then crawled underneath to mount the shifter. A little trimming and I had enough room for the shifter to go through all the gears.
I used a Lokar shifter boot and chrome trim ring (item# 70-FMB) to clean up the shifter base. Once I had the chrome rectangle in the best position, I heated up a round-tipped soldering iron and poked it into each of the pre-cut holes of the trim ring. This cauterized the carpeting so that when I drilled holes for the mounting screws it wouldn't catch a carpet strand and un-ravel the weave of Gary's pretty decent carpeting. Once that drill bit grips a bit of carpeting it can leave a stringer all the way across the floor. It also marked the spot where the screw was to be placed.
When I relaced the front seat I ran the shifter through the gears again and noticed that the handle hit the seat when it was in 2nd and 4th gears. I thought of three ways to remedy the problem:
Gary's '51 Chevy coupe is coming along quite nicely. With the shop engine bolted into the chassis with the 4-speed transmission attached I was able to make the modifications to the floor to make room for the shifter. I measured (twice) to see just where the shifter should come through and, after cutting an opening in the carpeting, drilled two 1" holes in the transmission tunnel. A peek through the opening showed me that my measurements were right on the money. Unusual for me. I opened the hole in the tunnel with a cut-off wheel and then crawled underneath to mount the shifter. A little trimming and I had enough room for the shifter to go through all the gears.
I used a Lokar shifter boot and chrome trim ring (item# 70-FMB) to clean up the shifter base. Once I had the chrome rectangle in the best position, I heated up a round-tipped soldering iron and poked it into each of the pre-cut holes of the trim ring. This cauterized the carpeting so that when I drilled holes for the mounting screws it wouldn't catch a carpet strand and un-ravel the weave of Gary's pretty decent carpeting. Once that drill bit grips a bit of carpeting it can leave a stringer all the way across the floor. It also marked the spot where the screw was to be placed.When I relaced the front seat I ran the shifter through the gears again and noticed that the handle hit the seat when it was in 2nd and 4th gears. I thought of three ways to remedy the problem:
- Rotate the shifter transmission bracket down in front and up in the back so that it moved the shift ball forward. That would have been too much trouble and I would have been required to re-adjust all the linkage rods again. Nix
- Eliminate the front seat altogether and have Gary drive the car from the back seat. That would have been the easy fix, and Gary could once again use those platform shoes that were hot in the disco decade. Nix
- Cut the front edge of the shifter handle nearly all the way through in the shape of a wedge and then force the gap closed bringing the shifter ball forward to clear the seat while keeping it within easy reach. This was too obvious. So I made the cut and the subsequent weld and things looked pretty fair. You can see the difference in the shifter photos. In each photo the transmission is in 4th gear. Fixed!
Yes, I'll dust the dashboard before Gary takes it.
Doug
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