Shift linkage grommets and tranny detent

[michaelbenner]

More investigation into my sloppy shifter in my 66 ragtop....

I have replaced the shift selector lever, the lower bushing, the shift detent, and the upper column bearing. Yay! My car no longer jumps out of park!

However, now the selector lever is pretty much floating between N, D2, and D1. Inspecting the linkage under the car, I discovered the linkage leading to the tranny is super sloppy. Lookee here:



[/img]

The middle joint (in the first picture) appears to have a bushing in it. The other two, however, are just floating in the holes. Especially the bottom one. There is about a 1/4" play both in and out of the hole, and up and down in the hole. The second pictures shows the gap there is between the pin and the hole. Are these supposed to have some sort of rubber bushing/grommet in them to keep the linkage tight? Any idea where I can pick these up, if so?

Second: The shop manual on page 7-54, first column, #3, mentions some sort of detent on the tranny itself. Do these wear out? And, is it inside the tranny? The reason I ask is because from under the car, I can pretty much move the lever attached to the tranny freely between the N, D2, D1 positions with very little resistance. Normal, or no?

As always, any thoughts are appreciated.[/img]

[tbird]

The linkage in your pictures should have plastic bushings in them not sure if any of the suppliers have these now years ago when I did mine I found bushings that would fit at the hardware store as they where not available then. The detent is in the upper column you need to pull the steering wheel to get at it they are very hard metal that is why the shift lever gets a notch worn in it not to often that the detent is worn out.

[michaelbenner]

Thanks for the reply. I'll take the linkage out and see what I can find.

As far as the detent goes, I already replaced the one in the column (mine was complletely missing...). The shop manual seems to indicate that there is some sort of detent on the tranny end of things (see the page I listed in my original post). It says there is some sort of adjustment you can do to make sure the shift indicator is lined up with the correct gear.

[sleeper bird]

i dont think mine has a sigle bushing either,that i might need to have a look at.

[66_Charly]

For what it's worth, I created my own transmission linkage bushings using the ends of these plastic thingy doodles here:



I don't know what the name is in English...

[sleeper bird]

good idea,i have noticed that lowes has a large selection of nylon bushings.

[tbird5866]

There is a detent inside the transmission. The ball for the detent action is backed bt a spring which may be broken. Sounds like what happened to yours. If there is a lot of slop where the detent mounts inside the transmission, the balll may have dropped out. To fix these problems, the pan and valve body need to be dropped inside the case. It's a tedious job to get it all back together, but can be done. Been there, done that!

[michaelbenner]

1) So I found the correct bushings at rockauto.com. You need three of them. Part numbers FO-300 and FO-405 (need two of the 405's).



Note: you need to ream out the middle of the bushings with a drill a little bit to get the linkage posts to fit.

2) Once I had the linkage out, I tested the shift lever on the tranny. It was tight and the internal tranny detent seemed fine.

When it was all put together, no more floating shift lever! Shifts between the gears nice and tight with no slop. FTW!

[66_Charly]

Thanks for the great feedback! This will help a lot of us in the future.

[sleeper bird]

if you could ,can you shoot a pic of where they go?

[sleeper bird]

sorry should have looked at the other post first

[michaelbenner]

If you get under the car...grab the shift linkage and shake it. If you need new bushings, it will be completely obvious where they go.

[hotelbuoy]

As I'm continuing my work on the Tbird. This thread was very helpful. I needed these parts and found them online too. Thanks for posting such great information.
Mike