So my car is a 72 with a tailshift and i just replaced all the shift bushings with a master kit from pelican. The car was slopy shifting before, so i decided to replace all the bushings to see what kind of improvements i could get. Upon disasembly i found that the ball cup was shattered and missing almost completly, and the bushing that holds the shift rod under the shifter was split in half. This finding was exciting because i figured the car would shift wayyyy better after i replace these bushings. Well, unfortunatly the car is still a slopy shifter. WTF
I have read lots of posts on this topic and figure that i need to weld up and reshape the ball thing on the end of the rear shift rod. What im having problems with now is that im grinding going into second. Before i changed all the bushings i would only grind trying to downshift into first. I have tried several different adjustments with the coupling inside the car, but cant seem to make the problem go away. I put the transmission in 3rd gear and set the shifter where third should be, then tighten down the clamp. What can i do to make all these problems go away?? Changing tranys isnt an option right now.

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Make sure your shift rod splines are fully seated at the firewall. This will cause adjustment issues.

Did you replace all of the bushings, or just those front ones? A tailshifter is going to be sloppy no matter what, it's the nature of the beast. Is your clutch adjusted properly?

I replaced all of the shift bushings inside and outside of the car. The only other improvement would be adding metal to the worn areas on the end of the shift rod where it moves the selector on the transmission.
I believe the splines are seated correctly inside of the car, that is where i keep making minor adjustments trying to dial this thing in. As for my clutch, it seems like i have it adjusted correctly, but it could possibly still use a little fine tuning. Everything worked fine before i changed the bushings.

The 901 tailshifter setup is referred to as "mop in a bucket" for a reason... As stated before, even with all new bushings in place and no broken linkage pieces, it is sloppy.

If still grinding when going into 2nd, it could be gearbox related and not so much shifter-related anymore.