Shifter adjustment instructions Options

[Dr Evil]

From my 31 pages of notes that I have been emailing a lot of copies of lately because I cant seem to post them here in PDF format.

Adjusting your shifter

Concept:
Before you can easily adjust your shifter you need to conceptualize what is happening. I can only do so well with words and diagrams, but once you get the concept you will be surprised how easy it is to adjust the shifter perfectly in a very short amount of time.

For this explanation, reference figures 2, 3, and 4 below. Figure 2 is the
conceptual depiction of how the shifter should be when aligned correctly. The black
outline is where you would like the shift pattern to be, and is where the stick-shift
actually can travel. The red lines represent where the shift pattern actually is. Stay with me, and make sure you get this concept.

Now a common issue is that people end up with only some gears, but not all.
Refer to figure 3. You will notice that the red lines are to the right and up from the
desired location of the shifter. In this setup you would only be able to select 1st and 3rd gears, but 1st would be near where 3rd should be and 3rd would be near where 5th should be. About now I hope you are having that “ah ha!” moment.

Adjustment:

1. Select a gear. In using figure 3 it would be wisest to select 3rd. You can determine that it is 3rd that you are selecting because there will be no gears past the middle (1st) and 3rd is the next over on the bottom. Also, you would have no upper gears.

2. Loosen the pinch bolt under the stick shift

3. Stabilize the shift rod in the tunnel so it doesn’t move, this way you are only
moving the stick-shift and not the rod, thus not changing the fact that the gear box
is in third.

4. Move the shifter to where 3rd should be. Second and 3rd are the only gears to use as they lie on the plane of the spring plate and you can use the shifters spring plate to guide you to where 2 and 3 should be.

5. Tighten pinch bolt and see if you can get all gears. The short answer is, put transmission into known 2nd or 3rd gear, then move the stick to where that gear is supposed to be. Now use this concept on Figure 4. In figure 4 you would only have gears 1, 3, and 5 as R, 2, 4 would be out of reach of your current adjustment. To fix this scenario you would follow the same steps as stated above.
I hope this clarifies this simple procedure. It is a bit more difficult to explain in prose.

Fig 2


Fig 3


Fig 4

[tessmar]

In my case it was a single setscrew which had backed out and was causing problems. Dr. Evil's diagrams helped me visualize and nail down the precise symptoms, and I thought I was in for pulling up the brand new, glued in carpet over the center channel in the cockpit.
My 1970 1.7 was converted to a sideshifter as part of its restoration by swapping my tailshifter for a box from a 914-6 which was getting a close ratio upgrade. I ws thinking I needed to know how the shift lever mechansim actually entered the box in order to further understand what was wrong and which way things needed to move to correct the problem.
I expected to see the mechanism entering from one side or another but when I looked it is more of a "bottom shifter" than a side mechanism. I immediately noticed that the piece which transitions the motion from the long shift rod to the box itself is retained by a setscrew which clearly had backed out...I could turn it by hand!
This setscrew has a long taper (at least 1/8") to seat into an indent on the long shaft. Cleaning it and using Loctite and seating it fully solved the problem of missed gears. So if you are having these sorts of problems, check that all connections in the linkage are tightened correctly before assuming you have bad bushings or an adjustment issue.
When I was researching shifting problems I did not see any mention of this in any posts I ran across. The diagrams of the linkage in places like Pelican appear to be lifted from the Haynes manual, and do not show the orientation of the pieces or where they actually connect to the transmission. I could not figure out how everything went together except to examine the car and try to look for the various components pictured in these aids.