Fixing Older Lokar Shifters -- How To w/pics!

I had problems with my older Lokar shifter's pushbutton being almost impossible to push down (and getting stuck down too) in my '54 Chevy pickup I built almost 20 years ago, and from reading other posts, other people had the same problem, so here's what I did to fix mine.

First off, I would like to thank Jeff from Lokar for answering my email right away to tell me the secret to how to take the handle apart. There are two different designs for the handle, and mine was the older one which was made before 1995. Jeff gave me tips on how to take either one apart. Mine turned out to be the older style, which is more tricky to take apart. So if you have one like mine that was made before 1995, here's how I did mine:

My button was completely frozen and I couldn't push it. The problem is that there are parts with tight tolerances down near the bottom that are packed with some grease that dries up and turns to sticky glue. To get the pushbutton to where I could push it down, I blasted the whole shaft and the lower end of the shifter a while with a heat gun to warm it up and soften the grease up. Once it was pretty warm (probably 100F), I was able to push the button down slowly.

There's a set screw on the backside of the shift knob (facing the seat). You unscrew that set screw first with an allen wrench. That screw doesn't actually tighten anything. It has a protruding nose on it that fits into a vertical slot in the pushbutton, and the nose only keeps the pushbutton from rotating inside the knob.

Then you use a wrench to loosen the jam nut that jams against the base of the shifter knob to free up the shifter knob so you can rotate it on the handle. You hold the pushbutton straight but rotate the outer knob counterclockwise 1/4 turn so that the hole where the allen screw came out of is aiming at the passenger door. Then you push the pushbutton in almost all the way down (heat up the handle if it's too hard to push). Then with a smaller allen wrench, you stick it through that hole into another hidden allen screw that's on the side of the pushbutton. That inner allen screw is what holds the pushbutton onto a flexible steel push cable. Once you loosen that screw (or take it all the way out), then you can rotate the knob and pushbutton off of the handle.

Then to get the handle off the base, you crack loose the cup shaped jam nut that's down at the base of the handle (my finger is pointing to it in the picture). Then if you can, rotate the whole handle and it unscrews from the lower mechanism. On mine though the handle was too long and I couldn't unscrew it because of the bend in it. So I loosened the set screw that holds the side arm and pried the arm off of the splined shaft (I made some marks so I could get the arm back on the shaft in the same orientation when I was done). Then I disconnected the neutral safety switch leads. Then I unscrewed the four button head bolts that hold the two pie slice shaped plates to the lower part of the transmission mount. Then I pulled the whole handle with the lower end all out together.

From what I could see, most of the gummy grease problem was down in that square block area at the bottom where the detent latch thing and the spring and stuff is hidden inside, but the grease on the cable was also a little gummy too. I dunked the whole thing in a tank of kerosene and scrubbed all the old grease out and used a piece of steel wire to help loosen up all the caked up dried grease. Eventually it suddenly loosened up in that lower block piece and you could slide the cable in with ease to operate that latch detent mechanism. Then I blew it out and put fresh white lithium grease in there. I lubed up the cable with some junk I had called Tri-Flow.

I put everything back together and readjusted it and made sure the neutral safety switch worked right and it works like a charm now.

So if you have a sticky old Lokar, that's how you fix it. I have more faith in Lokar now. The pushbutton lockout feature sure is nice when it works well. With any transmission mount shifter though, you're going to have the problem of the shifter handle vibrating a little while you're driving along, since the trans and engine are mounted loosely on rubber motor mounts. The longer the handle, the more vibration you get at the knob.

It's a pain, but I think you really have to do like I did and take the whole lower part off to be able to soak it in solvent to get the dried up grease out. You could use something like carburetor cleaner probably, but you have to be able to shoot it up from the lower side. That's where it seems to get gummed up the most. I think it would be tough to re-grease it without taking it all apart too.

 

Here's one more picture that shows what the lower end looked like after I packed new grease up into the hollow areas around the latch part, and in the plate with the steps that the latch pin rides in.

You have to be able to get solvent up into it from the bottom side to get the old grease out of there

 

According to Jeff from Lokar, the newer shifters built after 1995 are simpler to get the knob off. You just loosen the jam nut and spin the knob off.

 

Many thanks to you Rustybolts - this may be an old thread, but when Lokar aren't around at the weekend, this allowed me to swap out the ginchy old stock knob on a pre-95 shifter. Thank you!