I've got a 71 914-4 that I converted to a 914-6.
The problem is a very loud annoying squeak when I'm in the R-1st plane.
Something is really scraping badly.
Pulled the shifter which looks to have been changed out from an early shifter to a later shifter.
Greased it very well and that didn't seem to help.

So I looked a bit deeper and put a flashlight in the tunnel where the shifter sits pointing backwards.
Using a small mirror about 6-9" rearward, I see that the shift rod goes through a circular opening in a small bulkhead that is welded into the tunnel.

Looks like the scraping/squeaking is when the rod is hitting the edge of the circular opening in the bulkhead in the R-1st plane.
If you don't pull the lever all the way to the left, then you don't hear the scrape.

Is this typical of a side shifter conversion for an early 914?
Am I shifting incorrectly by pulling the lever hard to the left for the R-1st plane?
Does that bulkhead need to be removed by opening up the shift tunnel from above?

Any thoughts or ideas are welcome.
Thanks in advance.

As part of the conversion to a side-shift tranny, that bulkhead you found needs to have the opening enlarged. Otherwise, as you've discovered, the shift rod will rub against it and make a nasty noise, if it even works at all.

At this point, the most common choices are either live with the noise or pull the shift rod out and open up that hole in the bulkhead. I supposed if you really wanted, you could make a custom-offset shift rod that would clear the bulkhead, but I don't know how much work that would be.

I did a side-shift conversion for a friend a couple of years ago, and I can tell you from first-hand experience that that bulkhead can be a royal pain to get to without cutting an access hole.

Thanks BillC.
That aligns with what I am seeing.
I think you are right that the opening in the bulkhead needs to be opened up more or completely removed.
I see a small tube welded to the bulkhead as it passes by bulkhead, so maybe removing the bulkhead will bring other challenges....what does that small tube get welded too now?
Etc, etc.

I thought perhaps I could make an adjustment as to how the shift rod is "clocked" into the shift housing by rotating some splines clockwise or counterclockwise but doesn't seem to be doing much good. Just driving me crazy is all.

Anyone else out there with similar experiences or sage advice at this point?

Think I'm going to have to cut an access panel into the top of the tunnel where the bulkhead resides and get busy making modifications in that area.

Here's the small hole through the bulkhead that the shift rod goes through.

The diameter of the hole in the bulkhead is barely twice the diameter of the shift rod itself. Not much margin for error there.

In the R-1st shift plane, the shift rod is severely scraping the passenger side of that hole.

Click to view attachment

Already making plans with Cary at Middleworks to get this addressed.

Decided I'm going in with scuba gear!

As my main "go to" man is busy plus his shop is knee deep in mud puddles, etc.

I've decided to try this myself.
Have a game plan.
Pretty simple.

Cut a hatch in the top of the tunnel between the seats.
Means seats are coming out and all the carpeting in the rear of the cab.
Will drill a pilot hole and go in with a jigsaw with a short blade.
Cut out a 4"x4" or 5"x5" hatch.
Then go in with a dremel with carbide cutter.
Will open up the opening in the bulkhead (hoop) such that the shift rod doesn't hit it when in the R-1st plane.
I'll put 4 tabs with screws to hold the hatch back in place.
Come in with some new Dynomat and cover back up with the carpeting.
You'll never knew I was in there
Should be an afternoon job at most.
I'll take pics and post how it goes.

Looking forward to some squeak/scrape free shifting.

Wish me luck.

Good luck!

...while you are at it, you might want to clear up the driver side too?

Wont a jigsaw blade come close to the metal tubes?
What about a die grinder with a small cutting disk?

Yeah, I'll likely try that.
Certainly don't want to cut anything valuable inside the tunnel.
I'll be looking a lot inside with my mirror as I go.
Should be quite doable.
Will happen this weekend.
The scraping while shifting is driving me crazy on this car.

Absolutely.
Only want to be in there once. Ha

Is it possible to move the base of the shift lever to the left a little bit by slotting the mounting holes? Not sure that would provide enough clearance, but worth a look.

My precision shift adjuster has a small offset that I think goes the right direction, but again, its probably not enough to eliminate the contact. It might be possible to build one with additional offset. I don't think it has any effect on shift action but there may be other obstructions in the tunnel to consider when moving things to the left.

What's your firewall bushing like? Is it an old conversion bushing? That's another place where you might improve clearance in the tunnel without actually going in there.

I have ridden in a very nice 914-6 that seemed to have that exact issue. My car has the RennShifter with the side-shifter conversion done to my 6 transaxle and I have no rubbing or noises.

Similar here. Rennshifter, Renshifter linkage, Tangerine precision adjuster. No rubbing. Maybe I just got lucky.

My original six with side shifter did this. From memory it went away once I refurbished the shifter with a Weltmiester short shifter and Tangerine firewall bushing.

Never realized this clearance hole was different in early cars vs side shifters and how lucky I was that this worked itself out.

Now wondering what will happen as stuff wears. At least I will know what it is

The other thought I had was that you could maybe cut the shift rod in this area and weld a smaller diameter section into it at this area. Lotsa work, but maybe no more than accessing the tunnel to clearance the hole.

I am glad you posted this. I have had this issue for years on my 72 six conversion. I haven't bothered to fix yet. I have a carbide bit that is 6" long. I think I am going to use a small hole saw and see if get it in the correct location for grinding some clearance. If it's not I have a viewing window for doing my work through another correctly placed hole. I don't think I will repair holes since it is a track car. I do have carpet that does cover the area.

@raynekat

I'll tell you from experience that there is only 2-3 mm of clearance between the floorpan and these control tubes near that bracket.

Be careful in there

I have a picture of that are in sideview in my build thread.

Click to view attachment

Thin grey on bottom is floorpan edge view. Closest tube is the clutch cable tube, the smaller one behind it is the throttle cable tube and there is only 2-3mm clearance to the floorpan.

If you cut a hatch flap, it needs to be biased toward the passenger side to avoid the tubes.

I'm not sure the hole is any different. The early shift rod was a larger diameter but was supported by bushings at both ends so it only rotated and moved fore/aft. The sideshift rod moves left and right at the shift lever so requires more room around it.

This is definitely the issue.
When you move the shifter left into the R-1st plane, the bottom of the shifter and the attached shift rods moves in the opposite direction to the right...and quite bit right. Enough obviously to hit the passenger side of that hole in the bulkhead or hoop as Cary calls them.
Even in the neutral plane you can hear the shift rod bang up against the inside of the hole in the hoop.
Then when you move into R or 1st, you hear the big scrape.

I'll definitely get in there with my small flashlight and mirror from both ends (through the shifter hole and also the small access cover back by the rear fire wall.
I'll measure from both directions to find exactly where the bulkhead/hoop is located.
My access hatch that I will cut needs to be located aft of this just a bit.
I'll also look at where everything is located to make sure I don't mistakenly cut into something by accident.

So I just went through this recently - here's my findings, but obviously, as with most things with these 50 year old vehicles: YMMV.

My 1970 chassis had been converted to sideshift when I bought it. I only drove it home before stripping the car down for the -6 and GT conversion, so vaguely remembered it must have got into the gears....

On getting the car back on the road, I replaced the firewall bushing with a new nylon one, as well as getting a new PMS rear shift linkage (which misses the -6 headers) + brass bushing for the console. The shifting was OK but I - like you report - did detect a slight scraping in the R/1st plane. This never baulked any changes and was fine for a few thousand miles; until I noticed this scraping sharply deteriorating after WCR2020. To the point where I needed SERIOUS effort to move fore and aft when the lever was in the R/1st plane.

The fix for that appears in another thread on the world here http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?showtopic=350350

but to summarize, the main (scraping) issue was solved by the combination of:

1) replacing the front shift linkage rod (which was an early one modified) with a proper sideshift one (special thanks @mepstein for his generosity), and
2) replacing the firewall bushing with a decently engineered one (Tangerine Racing in this case)

The combination of the above meant that no scraping is felt anywhere, and once adjusted, shifting is much more predictable. Main point here is that the front linkage rod diameter was larger than the later (sideshift) skinnier one - which MAY be your issue too.

- Tony

What a pain to remove the seats.
I've got GTS Classic seats in my car and the bottom of their seats wasn't perfectly flat plus I don't think the mounting holes in the seats for tracks are in exactly the right spot.
Tough to put them in (they don't slide so great) and much tougher to get them out.
I moved them forward enough to get access to the bolts that hold the seat bases to the car and removed the seats that way.

Click to view attachment

With the shifter out of the way, and a mirror & flashlight in the tunnel, this is what you see:

Click to view attachment

Pretty apparent that the shift rod takes up a lot of room in that opening of the bulkhead/hoop.
My estimate was the diameter of the opening was about twice the diameter of the rod.
Not nearly enough for these side shifter conversions.

I do have the updated Tangerine Racing firewall bushing already in place, so that wasn't going to be the solution to my problem.
Possibly a perfectly bent shift rod could do it, but then you'd be up against the side of the opening in the 4th-5th shift plane and have possible scraping there....which I don't at this point.
Still planning to open up the top of the tunnel so I can get a die grinder in there.
It will be tight, but doable I'm thinking.
Luckily I'll be working in the part of the tunnel away from the wiring, tubes, cables, etc.
Most of that stuff is well over towards the passenger side were as the shift rod looks like it's mostly situated in the driver side of the tunnel.

More to come later.....

Where's the bushing? You can slice one side of the bushing on a diagonal & push it over & in. No disassembly required.

Not sure you can put a bushing there for the side shift conversion.
Because of the later shift assembly that used, the rod needs to be able to swing left and right.
A bushing would prevent that.

Carpeting pealed back revealing the sound deadening I used.

Click to view attachment

Removed the sound deadening with some of the thick tar stuff left behind.

Click to view attachment

Had to clean that up so it didn't get all over me, the cutting tools, etc that were coming later.
My favorite chemical, 3M Adhesive Remover, made quick work of that mess.

Click to view attachment

Plotted out where the bulkhead wall/hoop was located and where I was going to cut my access hatch.
Don't surgeons draw on you before they make their cuts???
You can easily see all the spot welds that are used by the factory to keep this bulkhead in place.

Click to view attachment

So how to cut the hole???
Many options.
Jigsaw, circular cutting wheel, plasma cutter (no, heck no), etc.

When I was in Harbor Freight today, I noticed something that just might be the ticket.
I wanted safe, effective, somewhat quick, non messy.

Here's what I came up with and I already had the tool.
It's the same vibratory scraper I used to remove all the undercoating underneath the car and all the sound deadening inside the car when I first embarked on this restoration journey 3 years ago.

Click to view attachment

All the tool needed was a different blade....a cutting blade vs the scraping blade.
Harbor Freight had a few different ones for cutting metal.
Here's a close up of what the blade looks like.

Click to view attachment

End result was perfection.
A very safe tool that wasn't going cut my finger off.
Minimal mess.
You can image where a cutting wheel was going to be throwing stuff all over the car.
This tool just vibrates as it cuts.

I made the 4 cuts around the perimeter of my access panel in less than 10 minutes.
It was slick.
Image a circular hack saw where you don't have to saw....the machine does all the sawing for you.
You just hold it and guide it.
It is also easy to control the depth of the cut, so this method had that going for it as well.

Voila:

Click to view attachment

So how'd we do?

Here's the money shot.

Click to view attachment

Tomorrow I will clearance some of the area I've got highlighted in the red.
Just enough so that the rod doesn't scrape across this bulkhead opening when in the R-1st shift plane.

This view gives you a good idea where all the cables and tubes are inside the tunnel.
None were directly above the shift rod area (which I knew already by looking in from the shifter opening) and everything is well to the passenger side of the opening or below it.
I'll push the shift rod as far to the driver side as possible to give me clearance I need.
Should be able to make the opening bigger with the shift rod in place.

I'll be using these bad boys to do that.
And they are a bit more dangerous to be sure.
Luckily the cutter will be in the tunnel while me and my body are outside the tunnel.

The rest of the story with pics tomorrow.....
Click to view attachment

Thanks to Raynecat for pointing me to his thread. I've been experiencing this same thing for a while now and only just discovered the root cause of the shift rod dragging on the bulkhead that he described.

So... my big question. How much better is the Tangerine Racing firewall bushing compared to a brand new conversion bushing? Willing to put the better bushing in, but I don't see how it can be much better than the brand new conversion bushing I just put in that is pretty much a zero clearance fit to the rod and I still have the problem. Trying REALLY hard not make too many irreversible changes to the chassis since its an original six. (I know, I know... it has GT flares. But... I LIKE them. )

@rayneKat - Excellent photos and work. Looking forward to the end result.

What does this bulkhead look like on side shift cars? Anybody have some pictures?

That die grinder made quick work out of opening up the opening in the bulkhead.
Only took a couple of minutes.

Making good progress, almost there.

Click to view attachment

Made sure not to cut away too much metal close to this tube that is welded to the bulkhead.

Click to view attachment

This is the finished hole with the shifter in the R-1st plane.
I noticed a small "V" of metal at the top of the hole.
Although it wasn't touching the shift rod, I didn't want to have to come back if the rod did start hitting the top of the opening.

Click to view attachment

Just touched up the point of the "V" with a hand file enough to smooth it out.
No way the top of the shift rod will hit any part of top of the opening in the bulkhead.

Click to view attachment



All that's left to do now is vacuum out the the inside of the tunnel of all the metal shavings and re-fit the access panel I cut out.
Then replace the interior that was removed earlier.

Man....it's so nice for that annoying scraping/squeaking to be gone.
Total cost was a couple of days fiddling a few hours here and there and the $10 cutting blade from Harbor Freight.
Another job knocked off of the "post build" punch list.
Just a few thousand more to go.....and I'll be there.
Ha


We've got some dry weather this coming week in Portland, so I'll get the car out and enjoy the silent shifting.

Yes. Great solution using the vibrating tool to make that careful cut. I'll have to remember that. So much safer (at least for me) than a disk.

The more I thought about a cutting disc, the less I liked that idea.
It is dangerous especially if a disc breaks at speed.

This vibrating tool is super safe and still cut the tunnel very easily, very effectively.

A magnet might work well to clean up the shavings.

Yes, have been using that as well as a shop vac and small paint brush to move all the chips to the suction.
Comical how much the vacuum misses that the magnet finds.
Must have pulled the magnet out of the tunnel 10 times with this amount of metal filings attached.
Good to get most of that out of there.

Click to view attachment

Afterwards I used a small paint brush and applied a couple of coats of etching metal primer to the edge of the hole I enlarged in the bulkhead and also along the edges of the access panel I cut out.
Then went in with some of my "touch up" paint in a spray can and hit the tunnel and the access hatch.

Click to view attachment

After this all dries, I'll install the access hatch top and begin putting the interior back together.
Nice to get this job behind me.
Have needed to get this done for over a year since picking up my completed project.
Always thought the scraping/squeak was in the shifter itself, but multiple times greasing it never eliminated the noise.
Now the reason is apparent why that never worked.

I'll have to admit that this is a pretty crude solution for putting back cover on my access hatch into the tunnel, but I don't have a welder (or know how to weld for that matter) and I wanted something easy to access in the future if necessary.
It was going to be hidden under some carpet and the center cushion.
Plus I wanted to use materials I had on hand.

So I installed a couple of aluminum straps for the tunnel lid to sit on.
Speed nuts were used where the hex head screws would be installed.
Each aluminum strap had 4 speed nuts.
Like this:

Click to view attachment

Then the tunnel lid was screwed into place:

Click to view attachment

After that came some of my carpeting next:

Click to view attachment

Then finally the center arm rest cushion/depository and the remainder of the interior will follow:

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Almost like nobody had even been there......
hehehehe

Again it is so nice to be done with this job and be done with that annoying scraping sound while shifting.

Doug, just a thought. How much bigger/wider do you need the hole to be? Could you do that by forcing a wedge into the hole (with the rod removed)? I can imagine a wedge attached to a 1/2 inch rod long enough to stick out through the fire wall. And then hit with a hammer? Or some other way to pry the hole wider?

Might not need to cut a hatch in the tunnel.

(Oops, I just noticed the second page of the thread and your documentation of the job done. Maybe next time.)

I likely needed more space than hitting a wedge in there could provide.
Plus a couple of tubes are welded to that bulkhead and I'd not want to chance breaking it loose from inside the tunnel by hitting it with a hammer.

@bdstone914

Honestly I'm not sure if my car uses a late model front rod or a modified early rod. I do know that it has the late style connection to the shifter and fits into the conversion bushing at the firewall. But what's in between . Seems like a lot of work to modify the front and the back and keep the middle for no apparent value. So I'm going to guess that its a late rod.

My car was a 1971 914-4 chassis with the original transmission converted to side shifter.
Additionally, I have a Tangerine Racing engine firewall shift rod bushing and a late factory shifter assembly, along with a stock early thick shift rod in the tunnel.

My solution above resolved completely my scraping/squeaking in the R-1st shift plane.

Took the car out for a quick spin today.

So very nice not to hear the horrid scraping/screeching when shifting into reverse or 1st gear.
Seems like there is a lot more room now in the R-1st "gate" as well.

Was kind of a PITA job, but very doable for anyone experiencing this exact problem.