Are there any major internal differences between the side shifters and the tail shifters? My tranny was "howling" and my mechanic said it was the ring and pinion. I had a old tail shifter that looked good but he said that the gears must be matched? and that since these were from the early and late model that they would not work.

Of course he had a "spare" tranny in his shop that he is willing to sell me.

Not so. The gears are the same. You can take the side shift tranny parts and put them in your tail shifter and be happy.

What you need to change in the tail tranny:
- Shift rods from side shifter
- Tail cone from side shifter
- Shift console from side shifter
- Studs from the side shifter at the shift console (they are longer so you can mount the console on the tail shift case

Then you will need the the side shifter external parts if you were originally a tail shift car set up.

Your mechanic is interestingly wrong in his advise to you and I would be wary.

If you need more exact help on how to go about this, or someone to do it for you I would be glad to help

The ring and pinion must be matched to each other, and are best if kept matched with their original case. Otherwise you get to spend a bunch of time with the $$ factory tools setting everything up again.

You can swap your gear shift linkage parts (all the internal rails and such) as well as the side-shift console and the end cover into/onto the tail-shifter, and have yourself a side-shifter. You can even leave out the end cover if you don't want yours.

But you can't just take the pinion gear out with the gear stack and swap it, nor can you realistically swap the ring and pinion into the other case.

--DD

Thats what I said Dont swap the stack, just the parts I listed.

Sorry, Doc--I started writing my reply before you posted, so I never saw your note...

--DD

I figured, I just couldnt pass up the opportunity to razz ya

"howling" is usually the intermediate bearings going bad esp the top one. Only the shifter linkage parts are different on those two trannys.

A bad pinion/ring gear is also a common source of howling, but the reason for this can often be linked back to parts from a failed bearing getting into the interface of these two and gauling them.

Good thing you said "usually". Of the dozens of 914 trannies I've had apart, there have been a significant number of bad ring and pinions, but noisy bearings on the mainshaft are still in first place. Of late, pinions are beginning to catch up. Perhaps it's because more trannies have been worked on by people who haven't a clue. The Cap'n