Hey guys, Maybe I'm not too tech savvy at times or whatever but im chasing my tail trying to find info on converting the column shift to floor in the 47 buick. Hurst shifters etc come to mind but just wondering if there's anyone out there who's done it already? 3spd manual. Cheers!!!
I did it on a '50 Buick years ago. There have been threads on here where others have done it as well. You have to understand that a Buick standard transmission of that vintage is a selector type transmission. It has one shift lever on the side. You push the lever into the transmission, and it shifts second and high; pull it out, and it shifts low and reverse. What I did is make a bracket from angle iron and bolted it to the top of the transmission. I drilled a large hole on the vertical part of the angle iron and inserted a large heim joint into the hole and bolted it up. I then ran a rod with the same diameter as the hole in the heim through the heim that acted as the shit lever. At the bottom of this lever there was another, smaller heim joint that attached to the shift lever coming out of the transmission. As I remember, low was to the right and towards the dash, second was to the the left and back, while third was to the left and forward. You can probably guess where reverse was. Once you got used to it, the pattern is fine, maybe even better that a conventional setup, because third was up and away from you while cruising. Once you have the basic setup, you can get creative with the rest of the shift lever. Other folks on here that have done this also mentioned the use of a heim joint, so I would think it's the way to go.
Awesome! Sounds the goods, thanks heaps for that, I'll do some research and alot of umming and aahing haha!
I used the exact same Ansen unit that mgtstunpy has posted on a 55 one armed bandit transmission hooked to a 322 nailhead. Worked fine but definetely not for speed shifting.
Zombie, I have one that is shop made that came my way in a trade. If you would be interested I could put up some pics of it for reference or if you want it pay the shipping and it could be yours as I will never use it.