Here is what I have come up with for a floor shifter on an early Cadillac hydramatic (1950) transmission. These are a little tricky as there never was a floor shifter offered from the factory. There are old Ansen, B&M, Drag Fast, etc kits that were made but they are tough to get today, and would not have fit my application. I wanted the shifter centered in the car, not off to the side. I was also determined to make all mechanical linkage, but you could use a Morse cable if it fit you particular application better. Step 1: Mounting Brackets The first thing I did was to purchase a LoStick and TH350 mounting kit from Race at Gennie Shifter. The mounting kit used the top 2 bolts on the tail shaft, just like it would on a TH350, etc. The hydramatic transmission has a threaded hole in the top of the case that I figured would be a good mounting point. I cut down the two side arms and made a bracket that tied the two sides together and picked up the center mount. I did have to do a bit of filing on the drivers side to get good clearance. Now that the mounting bracket is secured you can mount the shifter assembly. I did have to tweak the ears that mount the shifter mechanism, but not very much. Now you can bolt the mechanism in. I chose to keep my shifter forward as my car is a Tudor, but the kit will allow you at least 2 mounting positions. Step 2: Linkage This is where it will get interesting. As I said I wanted to keep mine all mechanical. I took the stock shifter arm off the transmission in hopes that it was splined 360 deg. or at the least it could be flipped upside down. No such luck. I only goes on one way. I took a bracket that came with the kit and cut the bottom off, trying to leave it as long as possible. The trans. shift pattern is N-Dr-Lo-R. I wanted to flip the pattern so that N was close to the dash, (straight up and down) and R was all the way back. I tacked the bracket to the top of the stock linkage arm and put it back on the trans. Then I moved the linkage and marked the 4 detents. At this point I put the splined arm on the shifter and marked where N was (neutral safety switch). The Gennie Shifter kit comes with several different detent plates. (I believe that I used a plate for a power glide.) I moved the shifter and marked the positions. I moved the tacked on bracket slightly further back and got the results I needed, the marks (detents) lined up. There was a little bit of filing on the detent plate to get it perfect. Now I had established where the arm needed to be, I took the arm off and Tig welded into place. Reassembled and rechecked. Now it is just a matter of connecting the points. I chose to use a male and female rod end and a threaded sleeve. Due to where I wanted the shifter the two points were almost in line. I threaded the rod ends together and mounted them on the shifter arm. I measured how long I need the threaded sleeve to be and cut it to length. Now it was just a matter of fine tuning. I did a bit of trimming to the sleeve once I had run it through the motions. I made this so that it can be taken apart from either side (trans. or shifter) or inside or under the car. I have added a few pictures that will hopefully fill in some of the blanks or answer some questions. I hope that this helps a few of you out there. The locations may be different based on your requirements, but the principles are the same. <O></O> Brock
Thanks a million. This will be a great help as I go spelunking under my floor pan of my 34 Ford. The current setup (a lug wrench between the driver's legs...gulp) is unacceptable, and this will provide me the last bit of info I needed to know to make tha change!
Is there any lock out for reverse? Or does it have some method to avoid bumping it into reverse from Lo?
I know this post is older than dirt but if anyone has done this and has some picks or better ways to do it can you help me out? Ive tried the Lokar universal shifter and can make it work but not real happy with the set up as is. If anyone has picks of doing this that would realy help.
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