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Floor Shifter Install

I have to be honest about this part of the project.  It sucked!!  Nothing went as expected and it has been taking forever to get to done.  Dan chose a B&M ratchet shifter over the stock column shifter.  It was agreed upon that it would be installed and at the time, it looked easy enough.... I was wrong!!

To start with, the shifter came with an installation kit for a late 80's Camaro.  I drilled a couple holes, installed the brackets and mounted the shifter.  Unfortunately the cable ended up going right through the front bracket used to mount the console.  I got around the issue by creatively cutting sheet metal and removing some of the bracket.  The cable was then routed under the car and attached to the transmission.  Everything was great until I tried to mount the console after cutting out the cup holders...

The shifter handle was not high enough to clear the console.  In fact, there was no way it would ever work using a stock console in its current form.  It had to get raised and tilted slightly forward to account for the slope of the transmission tunnel and height of the console.  I purchased some 1 inch square tubing and built a new base.  It gave the assembly additional strength as well as raised it high enough to give proper clearance.  A bad side affect of raising it was that the shift cable now had to move forward so more cutting and clearancing was needed.

Here is the semi-final product installed in the car.


Mounting the shifter was just the first hurdle.  I also needed to lock the column so the car would remain in park.  If it wasn't in park, it wouldn't allow the car to start.  After thinking it over, I decided on a clever way of solving my problem.  I had removed gear selection switch from under the dash because I needed access to the wiring.  I fabricated a "stop" using a hose clamp and a bolt which I then secured to the column.  This was a very cheap and reversible method and it worked great!

 



Last part of the install was the electrical.  I needed to tap into the interior lights to light up the gear selector.  Fortunately this wasn't difficult because all the wiring I needed was at the stereo connector.  The next set of wires was for the reverse lights.  The shifter had a switch pre-installed which made this also easy.  I just had to run the wires and tap into plug under the dash.

That left me with 1 switch to control 2 signals.  The first set of signal wires were for the ECM.  It needed to know when it was in drive verses park/neutral.  The second set was to stop the starter from operating if the car was not in park or neutral.  I had to call on the expertise of folks smarter than me to do it right.  It ended up being not too bad but I did have to wire in a couple relays as well as run several new wires.




The console build will be part of another blog.  This one has gone on long enough!!!!


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