This year, after early season driving without issue, last night I go out for the evening and after I walk out to my car after it has been sitting and I literally could not get reverse or first, period. Not with or without the engine running. I remove the gate and problem solved so I figure something came loose or shifted in the linkage. It definitely did not. I’ve been doinking around with this for quite a while so I have marked the positions of every u-joint and spline in the shift linkage. All were tight. No movement. Hmmmm? So I’m thinking the engine isolators must have relaxed a bit, enough such that it changed the initial setting of the linkage. At first I was skeptical this could produce enough movement to do this but after trying to have my wife hold the shifter while I repositioned and tightened the linkage, I was surprised by just how small of differences in the initial linkage position significantly affected shifting performance. I actually found I even needed to hold the u-joint downstream of the where I was tightening the turnbuckle else the loose end of the linkage would turn while I was tightening it, and even this was enough to affect the initial setting and shifting behavior.
I remembered Ron McCall posting that he had made a couple of wooden blocks to hold the shifter in the gate so I figured I’d give that a try. Tap them in place with a plastic mallet and it works very well. Standard tool in my kit now and I’d recommend it to everyone. But I had another surprise. The position of the linkage that makes every gear engage silky smooth even while running hot makes it impossible to get reverse in any condition; hot, cold, engine running or not! ??? So I removed the gate and no problem. Hot shifting, cold shift, engine off, all seems great. This is starting to annoy me, so I put the gate back on and just started experimenting a little by biasing the shifter with the blocks. The shift lever biased to the right as shown allows access to all gears and is functional but has the “sticky” feeling after hard running and requires a fair bit of pressure to get second and third while hot, and also produces some bad engagement of first and reverse.
So to recap, the position that allows optimum feel and performance shifting 1-5 even while hot completely denies reverse with the gate on. Remove the gate and no problem. The position that allows all gears and reverse performs somewhat poorly hot but seems fine cold. This winter there will be an engine and ZF swap, otherwise I’d put more effort into this and might even be tempted to make a new gate to accommodate the optimum linkage position. In the mean time, I think I’ll just run without a gate and enjoy. I just don’t want to transfer the problem post engine/ZF swap.
1. I’ve checked clutch travel hot and cold; though I’ve suspected it for a while, there just doesn’t seem to be an issue here based upon how it feels and there’s not even a hint of the car wanting to travel on flat ground with clutch engaged in any gear.
2. As Marlin had suggested I did check whether the reverse switch was causing some interference with reverse in the best 1-5 position but this made no difference.
3. I also checked to make sure the trunion support was still tied down tight and it was. Not sure I mentioned it but I do have the Pantera Performance conversion to a close fitting rod through a rod end instead of the rubber isolated trunion.
4. The motor mounts are not urethane. They are OEM style rubber and do not appear to have relaxed or deformed discernibly. I’m thinking maybe I need to pull the mounting screws down and compress the isolators a bit and see if that stabilizes things.
I’m still feeling a bit surprised by how precisely the linkage needs to be set. Anyone else had similar issues? It’s got me scratching my head a bit.
Best,
Kelly