I’ll keep that in mind EM. I might start on the patch this week, so we’ll see how it goes.

I spent last week figuring out the shifter. When I did the original mock up as a street rod I had wanted to have a column shift and rather than build a lot of mechanical linkage I modified the column for a cable, which worked well with the 727 I had in it at the time.



Going the more traditional Hot Rod route this time, I wanted something more in keeping with the 50s-60s. There wasn’t a lot out there that I liked, pretty much ratchet shifters and Lokar, neither which did much for me. I thought for a long time about using a 50’s push button shifter, but decided I did not want to give up the park feature. I eventually settled on a simple universal shifter that has been around since the 60s. I’ve seen these exact marked as Mr Gasket, B&M, Hurst and Indy over the years, but this one has no name on it. I’ve used a couple of them before and they are really not a bad unit for the cost.



First thing I had to do was get a valve body in the 518 case and fortunately thanks to the board I found out that a 727/904 body would physically bolt in to give me the manual shaft and detents (and I happened to have a junk 904 laying around).

I spent a day figuring out that straight mechanical linkage would not work because of how close the 518 is to the sides of the transmission tunnel. I eventually converted the shifter to cable. Rather than a long cable with two 180 degree loops I opted for a short cable to a bellcrank and mechanical linkage from there.






The last thing I still have to do is go into the side plate of the shifter with a die grinder and cut some additional detents so it can’t be accidentally bumped into a lower gear and provide a positive reverse lockout.




Overall the shifter gives me the look I want and feels good, especially manual upshifting.