Anybody ever look at using a 915 shifter in a 914? Asside from the lower linkage being different (proabably an easy adaptation) would these work?

Yes I have one in my car (914-6) because I have a 915 transmission in it. there is no reason on earth to install that clunky 915 thing unless you have a 915 gearbox installed. If you are so inclined I can tell you exactly what you need to do it successfully (meaning the obvious does not work very well with the 915 box because of the extra shift length of the 914)

Thanks for the reply George. I was under the impression that the 915 shifter had a more concise throw than the stock 914 shifter. Something closer to a Rennshifter.

I'm doing this in my car, but I had all of the parts just laying around including a 915 shift tower (Type 2 if I remember clearly) and extra 914 shifters as well. Plus I have a couple of early 915 transmissions, one of which will eventually go into this car and I LIKE to fabricate stuff. The Type 1 towers have a pivot length that's too long for our 914's I think. It's a tighter shifter if all the slop is taken out of it. Not hard to do. I have some pix of the fabrication on another computer.

I like the height of the 915 tower better because it's closer to the steering wheel and you don't have to reach as far to get your gears. It's also easier to build-in a vertically centered (2nd and 3rd gear plane) shift position by adding a longer pivot pin and spring. But there are a bunch of things to do to make this work.

The top (carrier) plate has to be modified and you have to cut off a 914 shift lever and weld it to the bottom of the 915 lever... with precision.

And I have the 915 tower turned around backwards as well and a hole cut into the base to access the split-sleeve bolt in the 914's tunnel.

I don't have the lower pivot length perfect yet and the lower lever length is likely too long by a "little bit", and I was careful. There's plenty of front to rear throw. But not enough rotation (left-to-right) to get all 3 shift-planes without opening the carrier plate side-to-side, and/or shortening the lower arm. Then there is welding in a new reverse-lockout tab onto the shifter if you want to use the original tab on the top plate.

It's a fun project but I'm thinking but most folks will give up on it and install a Rennshifter or something already engineered for the 914.

There is a site with information about this mod specifically for the very early 911 crowd. Since the 901 transmission is similar to our 914 tranny's the patterns are the same, but the throws are not since our shift mechanisms have a different geometry.

It's Seine Systems and the only one I found with info about the 915 towers etc. in a 911. This includes how to identify your tower.

http://www.seinesystems.com/GateShift-901.htm and

http://www.seinesystems.com/ShiftType.htm

George, what info do you have on this mod for those of us who like to tinker?

I did it, I installed a seine systems shifter in a 914 sideshifter. Like pcar siad, you must cut the eyelet off of the 914 shifter and the ball off of the 915 shifter and weld the eyelet on to the 915 shifter. My first weld failed because the metal involved doesn't like to be welded so I chamfered both sides really wide and put a HUGE weld, probably 1" wide, to join the two. It's held for 4 years of track use, that much I know for sure.
I clamped it all in a vise and put a drill bit that fit tightly into the eyelet and another in the whole through the 915 shifter so that I could see if the holes were aligned. I also made the length between the pivot hole and the eyelet as long as possible to make into a shortish shifter. The customer was ecstatic. He had blown a shift and bent his valves (-6 cyl) twice in 1 year but never again.

Yup, I also drilled a dowel hole but used drill stock instead of a drill. The bevels on the two welded edges are required. When the initial piece was a little long, I cut the 914 arm off (Dremel operation) and still had the drill stock core to keep the piece centered after cutting it off shorter. The MIG reweld was a cinch.

Note: I toyed with the idea of brazing the joint instead, but didn't want to use a torch and mess with the heat-treatment in the 911 shifter.