Home made floor shift?

Can any body remember how three speed floor shifts were made from cut down tree shifts? The guys a little older than me had them (I'm 60) but I sure can't recall how they were made. Hell lets face it I can't remember what I had for supper Thanks

 

I got a NOS "Drag-Fast" complete shifter conv. kit on EBAY about 4 years ago. Not becuase I wanted to convert, but my 3 on the tree shifter arms/legs were gone beyond repair. Kinda nice, because it's a straight line manual 3 speed. (All in a line...Push down and towards you, first, pop-it out and forward 2nd, pull straight back..3rd.) Now, if I hadda do it again, would be a cheap-o Hurst. The Drag-fast would be good for just that- dragging. Not good for traffic driving.
Tito

 

Here ya go man, straight out of Rodding and Restyling Sep. 1959

I hope you can read it, I don't have a scanner but it reproduced just about actual size though. Enjoy.

 

One of the coolest tech post I've seen in a long time.

 

You can't beat the old stuff!

 

Yea... thats pretty freaking cool.

 

Yep!!

 

I also like the article in the same magazine about the latest fad (in 1959) air brushing and striping T-shirts

 

"Wear a Weirdie"

 

pages 14-18 yep I don't think the T-shirt fad will last! do you?

 

My mother says "tee" shirts are for beatniks.

 

I don't know how to do it, but the guys around here, circa 1957, were using the parts off of '54ish Chevy columns. Word has it they shifted fast as hell for draggin', but that you could rip 2nd gear to pieces just as fast! The stories I have heard were all related to side shift Buick trannies, as the guy who built the shifters was (still is) a Buick man.

 

We made the same shifter for a friends built 51 Olds coupe.

Worked great, we used Chevy shift arms on the Cad-Lasalle side shift.

The shift arms were the ones that were simply folded over 3/16" with a slit sawn in them so a bolt could compress the arm over the trans shifter shafts.

Not long after the car was up and running, we found the shift arms slipped on the Caddy trans' rounded shifter shaft.
Next size up bolt and a notch filed in the shifter shaft cured that.

The shifter worked pretty good, but when the Hurst shifter came out, that was it.
The Hurst shifter went on and life was never the same after that.
You could knock out a speed shift on the three speeds that was almost as quick as the four speeds could shift.

 

we used shoebox ford shifters for our floor shifts. i used one on a 50 chev coupe with 283 and stock 3 speed. drove that car as a daily for 2 years, and the shifter worked perfectly. btw im 65 im glad i lived during all this car stuff.
riverrat

 

bttt cause this thread is cool.

 

hahaha.... dem East-coasters were some poor bastards.

 

For $30 then, you could get a floorshift conversion. As much dickin' around that'd be to do what they did, you couldn't pay me to WATCH someone else make it! hahaha

Still a neat article though....

 

Everything's relative.......$30 was a crap-load of money in 1959, if you were a kid slingin' tires around in the storeage room of a Western Auto store after school and on Saturdays, making 65¢ / hour. I'm too young to have experienced that, but my older brother told me about it.....

 

Some of us still are

 

Wow, too cool. I'm glad I've held on to a 3/tree column; getting some ideas... Kudos to RockabillyTim for digging up tech!

 

Glad you guys liked it, I was suprised how good the pictures turned out, definately more stuff to come!

 

Does anybody know if this could be done to a ford-o-matic transmission?

 

No reason why not.

If the shifter has detents they would match the Ford-O.


One comment about when some of these were made though . . . there were some tremendously crude floorshift conversions available commercially.
These things were solely for the tall shift lever look and didn't speed shift worth a damn.
A friend of mine put one in his 49 Shoebox and it was forever coming out of adjustment.

The shortened and welded up Ford shifter was the best of all the early offerings until the Hurst Shifter came out.

The Hurst Shifter was so good that you could shift the shifter proper from first to 2nd using a baseball bat to hit the shift arm and it never missed a shift.
Hooked up to a trans it was a little slower, but not by much.

Any missed shifts with a Hurst were strictly your fault....

 

I must be of another school of thought, I'd rather build my stuff than buy it. I take a sense of pride knowing I did it myself.

 

Yeah, got an old Hurst 3spd shifter that needs to go into my old man's 55. Column linkage is kinda tricky to get into second without hanging it. My fave description of the Hurst is "shift as hard as you want, just don't break your hand."

 

One thing to add about Hurst Shifters for three speeds is that later on they offered a budget shifter called "The Hurst Mystery Shifter."

It was a pretty good unit, had the same shifter shift box or whatever you want to call it and a couple of reasons it was lower in cost was the lack of shift stops and a round shift lever.

Nice part about the round shift lever was you could bend it to fit if necessary and if you did it right the chrome wasn't bothered.

The lack of stops proved to be a problem when running a Caddy side shift.
The long 2nd-high casting sticking out the side of the trans would break off sometimes.
The leverage pressures on the long casting during a speed shift could get pretty high when you hit the end of the trans lever throw.

Happened to me at San Fernando dragstrip and I would have fallen on the floor of my Olds Rocket powered Shoebox if I hadn't been belted in.

Problem was solved by welding in adjustable stops similar to the regular Hurst Shifter.

The home-made Ford shifter worked pretty well during speed shifts and if you got a little overzealous the lever arm would simply bend.
Just had to learn to go with what the trans and shifter could handle.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Long as we're talking shifters; I owned a flat 6 powered 51 Plymouth 4 door once upon a time.
To gain the desired tall shifter look I swapped in an early floor shift trans.
The old trans' shift lever stuck up about the right height and looked cool.

When I decided to chrome plate the lever, I found the trans cover plate and lever were factory assembled as a one piece unit.
So I got another top plate to run while the tall lever was at the chrome shop.
Bad part about this piece was the shift lever had been hacksawed off and was about 10" - 12" long.

The really bad part was, you could take off in low, put your left foot on the gas pedal, put your right foot on the shift lever, push the lever firmly, let off the gas and get right back on which sorta kicked the trans into 2nd.
The clutch wasn't used during these little stunts.
Done more as a joke than anything else, but we never broke the trans doing it.

Proving that God does smile on fools now and then.
Lucky for us....

 

What a trip down memory lane!

I had that article, and was going to whack the column shifter in my '51 Ford, and put it in the floor - how cool that was going to be. January 1960 brought me a letter from Uncle Sam, and I went into the Navy. While I was away, my Dad sold the Ford, and life went on down the road.

 

That was friggin cool! I'd never do it but it is cool.

 

bringing this one back to the top

 

Actually; I plan to modify my old 3 on the tree for the auto....I don't want to clutter up the floor