Thread: Followed Me Home II

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The more I looked at it the less I liked the bracket so it's gone. Think I'll look for a tube mount to hang it off of the spreader bar, and see if that's better....

Try something that looks like the end of a Model A headlight bar........something tubular and tapered..........thematically work better with the look of the front suspension..............totally tubular man................

Originally Posted by Bob Parmenter

......something tubular and tapered..........thematically work better with the look of the front suspension..............totally tubular man................

Great idea, perhaps a scaled down version of the headlight mounts? Or at least mimics it.. and the tubular idea would aid in fuel mileage!



sorry - couldn't help myself!

Just read this whole thing. Nice work Roger. This is quite an inspiration for me. I find it comical, some of the concerns over thread engagement and fuel tank theories. These guys are gonna hate my car!

Originally Posted by chopsmitty

Just read this whole thing. Nice work Roger. This is quite an inspiration for me. I find it comical, some of the concerns over thread engagement and fuel tank theories. These guys are gonna hate my car!

Thanks for the kind words. Gotta say you brought a smile to my face with this one....

Looking good Roger.

I tend to get hung up on details, and without really intending to I get stalled and basically all progress stops. I'd been fretting with the door fitment, worrying about just exactly how I needed to shim the body to "fix" it, and finally just fixed it! The gaps were close, and in fact too tight, so I adjusted to get them centered, then ran a tape line on the door edges and got after them with an angle grinder. In short order the doors are gapped, and they shut and latch right.

With that done it freed up my head to attack other tasks. Got the LOKAR shifter mounted and adjusted first:

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Took me several tries on the NSS before I figured out to ignore the instructions and adjust it the way that made sense to me.... The transmission hump came as a separate piece, but of course after I thought I had already modified it to fit the 700R4 it didn't fit the shifter A bit more glass work and it was good to go:

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Got the accelerator pedal mounted - not my choice, but the PO bought it so we use it. Who looks at a foot feed, anyway, right??

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Got the throttle cable mounted, with a bit of massaging on the pedal to help it sit closer to the floor:

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Started looking at the LOKAR floor mounted E-brake, but the seats are really tight together. Even though I already made some 1/8" plate pieces with seat mounting bolts to mount under the floor I think I'll move the buckets out about 1/2" out on each side to give just a bit of clearance in the middle. The seat back adjustment handles will be right up against the outer interior panel with the move.

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Also abandoned the idea of using the stock '32 tail lights. I kept messing with them, trying to figure out just how I wanted to modify the OEM mounts to bring the lights in tighter and down lower, and finally decided I simply don't like the stock lights on a highboy. After a bit of looking I settled on the '39 style, but really liked the Technolstalgia LED units on the '33, especially the fast triple burst light for brakes, so I opted for their Mini-Zephyr lamps -

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Gotta give Speedway Motors some props here. I'm in their #1 UPS Zone, so if I order by 3pm the package is on the BBT for the next day. On this order I clicked "Order" at 8pm, and it showed delivery the next day! Sure enough, it arrived 16 hours after I ordered! Talk about great service.

I also ordered a piece that I think will solve my fog light mounting problem, but that will have to wait until early next week as I need to go get a piece of aluminum or SS flat stock to see if it's going to work.

Originally Posted by rspears

I tend to get hung up on details, and without really intending to I get stalled and basically all progress stops.

LOL! You just described me and about a thousand others like us!!! It's never as bad as our mind makes it out to be once we just get on with it. LOL! This is what I call being anal..

Roger, How was dialing in the Lokar shifter(I have a nostalgia shifter in the Ford truck). Mine frustrated me so much because if I dialed it in for park and drive, it would want to jump in gear in neutral. If dialed in for neutral. it doesn't want to reverse right. Was driving me nuts, one of the big reasons I still don't have my truck back, is because my friend Randy has been having similar problems. It might just be the tightness of the gear distance on the shifter linkage on the C6 transmission, but it is anything but simple!
Nice progress on all front for you. Good work, and your not allow on the obsession to do it just right getting in the way of getting it done. I've been there every step on my project.

Originally Posted by stovens

Roger, How was dialing in the Lokar shifter(I have a nostalgia shifter in the Ford truck). Mine frustrated me so much because if I dialed it in for park and drive, it would want to jump in gear in neutral. If dialed in for neutral. it doesn't want to reverse right. Was driving me nuts, one of the big reasons I still don't have my truck back, is because my friend Randy has been having similar problems. It might just be the tightness of the gear distance on the shifter linkage on the C6 transmission, but it is anything but simple!

Steve, it sounds to me like your nostalgia shifter & the lever arm on the transmission shaft are not matched. The LOKAR comes with the shifter all assembled, other than the mounting brackets that attach to the tranny to form a base for the shifter, plus it has a new arm for the transmission shaft so that the linear distances of the two parts, shifter arm and transmission arm, match. Also, each is specific to the transmission they are mounted on - the shifter "kit" is ordered so that the shift spacing matches exactly to the transmission it's mounted on. If yours didn't come with a new tranny arm they "assume" that it's OEM, and it may have been changed at some point?

My problem was the neutral safety switch (NSS) adjustment. It comes with a nifty little aluminum plug that installs in place of the NSS as the right side support bracket is allowed to move to get everything centered, and is then tightened down. Mine was just a hair out, allowing the NSS to remain closed in Drive - not an acceptable feature. After a few attempts following the instructions I examined the parts, and realized that I simply needed to shift the right side bracket a smidgen to get everything where it needed to be. I think that the little aluminum plug had just a bit too much clearance for some reason. It's all good now, and I seem to have all gear positions clean.

I think it's just a hard fit for the c6. The shifter was for a c6, but you have to cut the threaded rod, and adjust angle when instaled to the tranny, your's sounds a lot more straight forward!

Originally Posted by stovens

I think it's just a hard fit for the c6. The shifter was for a c6, but you have to cut the threaded rod, and adjust angle when instaled to the tranny, your's sounds a lot more straight forward!

No, you have to do the same steps with LOKAR. The shifter can mount in any position on the mounting rails, depending on where you want the stick relative to the dash & seats. Once set the shifter arm is to be at/near the 4:30 clock position in PARK, and tranny arm also in PARK. Measure hole to hole, subtract 1.75" for the rod ends and cut the threaded rod to length. I needed to put a little dog-leg at the shifter end of the all thread rod to clear a "bump" on the tranny, but easy to do without heat. The key is that when you cycle through, and end up in PARK you should be able to pull a bolt out of either end of the rod and it fits back into the hole on the arm without any friction - both the shifter and the tranny are in their detent positions, and the rod fits between with ease. If you have it adjusted for that fit then every shifter position detent should correspond to a tranny detent. I do remember that they said if the shifter is mounted to the extreme forward position then the shifter arm needs to be moved to around the 4:00 position to work smoothly. All of that worked fine for me. It was only the NSS that caused a bit of frustration, and I managed to make that work with only a bit of free-styling.

Thanks for that tip! I will try that if Randy can't dial it in!

Steve, you've got me totally confused. When I Google "nostalgia shifter" it takes me directly to the LOKAR site - Lokar: Nostalgia Automatic Transmission Shifters Is your shifter something besides the LOKAR Nostalgia model for the C6 tranny? If that's what you have then these instructions show the pieces & parts that came with it, including a new tranny shift arm - Instructions here http://www.lokar.com/downloads/pdf-i...untShifter.pdf Also, LOKAR sells an adjustable shift arm for the C6, and in that instruction it points out that some OEM arms are welded to the transmission shaft, and if so they must be cut off using a cutoff wheel. You can't use the OEM lever arm with the LOKAR shifter, IMO.