Thread: Lokar Shifter Issues

Tweet

tech at genie can kiss my grits. i went through their attitude last time so i saved the last one. the nice little grove is not suppose to be there. the gate saws a grove in the soft steel. by the time i got it you could shift back and forth easily , no lock in park.

Shine, Thanks for the picture. I just spent an hour or so messing around with some aluminum sheet. I cut a strip 1 1/8" wide x 6" long and slid it under the gate plate. The front end has a 1/2" x 1/2" cutout for the front of the shaft but the sides of the front and the back edge are bent around the sleeves for the mounting bolts. That forms a cavity below the gate plate and I shoveled in about a tablespoon of Marfak which is pretty stiff and I think the trans will have to get pretty hot to melt all the Marfak and drain it out, so for the forseeable future the end of the stick should be bathed in Marfak. I can make adding more grease part of maintenance and maybe that will give added life to the stick. Thanks for the warning. The Gennie tech guy did have an attitude and I thought he might be interested in an idea to lubricate the tip of the stick but he didn't even want to hear it. Apparently the gate plate is heat treated steel but the stick is not!

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Shine,

I had to order boot for the Gennie shifter and got to chat with a guy a little higher in the food chain at the Gennie site. He said the company is under new management since about five years ago and the tips of the shift lever are now hardeded as well as the gate plate, but even so I packed my shift plate with wheel bearing grease (Marfak) and wrapped the base with duct tape. Maybe I lucked out in buying one of the later units with the hardened tip?

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

i heard the same story last time. it seems every time i have a problem with 1-800-streetrod they have already fixed the problem. it is a poor design from the git go. the last one i replaced was only 2 years old but the guy drives the car daily. in my shop truck i'm going to use a mr gasket detent shifter but i will cut off their stick and use a short hurst stick.

I think the neutral safety switch’s main role is to keep track of the position of the gear selector lever. It prevents the engine from starting if the gear or transmission is not on neutral or park position. If the gear is on this position, it would be easy and safe to start the vehicle. With the neutral safety switch working just fine, untoward accidents can be avoided. Yet there are some signs that will pinpoint defect on this part. One is when the lever has to be shifted from park or neutral mode in order to get the engine to start. Another is if the car starts in Neutral but not in Park mode. That’s the go-signal for a replacement. So better check it though. Well, this site is great. I'm getting a lot of good info here. I'll be bookmarking this thread again, thanks pros.

This is a pretty old thread and since it has been brought back from the dead I thought I'd add a little to it. Don's shifter seems to be working ok now because he is just being more careful to make sure it is clicked firmly into park and he never starts it when he is not in the drivers seat. The fancy aftermarket knob and long stick are not probably helping the issue due to the added weight up top. But for all practical purposes it is fine now.

The only issue I had with the Lokar in my 23 was that sometimes, while driving along, if I hit a hard bump it would drop down from 3rd to 2nd. When it happened on the interstate a couple of times at 60-70 mph it is quite disconcerting! The fix was very easy though. I took the boot off and there were two jam nuts that adjusted the tightness of the shifter movement. It was very loose. But after tightening them up the problem never resurfaced, and I had taken quite a few long trips since with it never dropping into 2nd again.

Another thing I might add is that the original knob that comes with the Lokar has a button you push down to change gears. I liked it in the beginning, but Dan bought me a large Lucky Lady knob at Daytona one year and I put it on, with the required adapter. At first I didn't care for it, but learned to like it a lot.. In fact, I just removed it and reinstalled the original when I sold the car because it was a gift that I wanted to keep, and it was really hard to get used to driving the car with the original push button knob again. During the recent trip to the Street Rod Nats in Tampa I found myself having to guess at what gear I was going into.

Don

Don, Thanks for the tip on solving the accidential down shifting problem, when driving over bumpy roads (I've had that since day one with my Lokar). It'll be easier to drink my coffee now ,lol

Since this thread started I have gotten some (dang few) miles on my car and will stand by what I said a year ago about the Lokar: it's pretty, works fine but I shoulda had a cable shifter. I'm fairly tall at 6'4" and you can probably guess my right knee keeps "helping" my shifts - and usually at inappropriate times. I'll probably just get a shorter lever to move it closer to the floor and will then have TWO used Lokar shift levers to try and sell, the original 23" plus the current 16"

I used a Lokar in the 32 car that is in my gallery---issue with it mounted on the 4l80 trans was that the geometry between the shifter and the trans is impossible to get right with a rod going between them---to get the proper and correct relationship I ran the rod back to a pivot arm mounted on the crossmember and another forward to the trans arm. There was no other way to get the trans and shifter on the same page about park, neutral and shift detents---

On my wifes 33 I used a shifter from a Camaro with a cable

Originally Posted by jerry clayton

I used a Lokar in the 32 car that is in my gallery---issue with it mounted on the 4l80 trans was that the geometry between the shifter and the trans is impossible to get right with a rod going between them---to get the proper and correct relationship I ran the rod back to a pivot arm mounted on the crossmember and another forward to the trans arm. There was no other way to get the trans and shifter on the same page about park, neutral and shift detents---

On my wifes 33 I used a shifter from a Camaro with a cable

What you did, Jerry was considered as the angle between the Lokar shifter arm and the tranny arm is very acute - but it does work for my C4

Heck - I didn't even mention other mods I made as it's just a part of roddin' and making 'generic' aftermarket parts work I replaced their puny .25 threaded rod and cheapo stamped Heim linkage setup with much better .3125 hardware and redid the C4 shift arm bracket with stronger material - though I did keep the geometry the same. I'm also using a couple of set screws(instead of one) to tighten everything snug to the tranny case then shortened their mounting bracket.

I have a Gennie rear mount shifter in my '32. It works fine but the damn thing vibrates and the noise drives me nuts. Everything is tight. I emailed them about it and I was told to tighten down the nut that adjusts the detente spring. It helped a little, but it wasn't until I replaced the plastic knob with a steel one that it reduced it to tolerable. Personally, I liked the B&M Quick Silver I had in my other rod, but my interior is designed around this one so I guess I will have to live with it.

i kike the mr gasket detente shifter . i hate ratchet shifters on a street car . plus it is only 118 bucks. and it is a cable shift.