| |
In the late 1950's there were occasional descriptions of the parts required and methods to convert a Fordomatic car to a 3-speed standard shift. The ones I saw explained why a complete steering column with the shifter mechanism had to be swapped in from a donor car. When a friend needed to actually do this we gathered in a machine shed with a pit in mid-Winter and began on his 1951 Ford V-8 with Fordomatic. All went well until time to attach the shifter rods to the transmission shift arms and the shift arms on the replacement steering column. The path was all wrong. Using a torch to heat the rods made the path OK but now they were too mushey to make good shifts. Tempering the rods in oil to harden them finished the job a week later.
|