Antique & Classic Cars Blog

With the sun out both weekend days, wrenchers trying to beat the winter took advantage. I stole a few hours to fix a gas leak from the carburetor and fix the custom shift linkage on my V8-in-a-TR6 project.

Factory linkage for the TR8 gearbox puts the shifter back too far–note disassembled handbrake to make clearance.

My friend Tom Porter, who rebuilt my ‘62 Olds F85 V8, is an ace fabricator and he and I figured out a way to take 6 inches out of the factory setup. The stock TR8 shift linkage uses a long shaft with heim joints on both ends. The bottom of the shift lever goes through one, and a pin at 90 degrees with the shaft protruding from the gearbox and which shifts it by going in and out and side to side, goes through the other.

Factory linkage uses a shaft with heim joints at both ends.

After shortening the aluminum housing by six inches, we didn’t have room for even one bracket for the shaft to pivot in. Instead Tom welded a heim joint to a forked piece of steel, welded a square bar to the base of the shift lever, and I drilled the fork and the square bar for a pin. The back portion of this setup pivots on only one axis, while the fork swings side to side with the shift lever. This allows the new shortened piece to be suspended without a braket in the aluminum housing and to still move the gearbox shaft in and out and side to side. It seemed slick and moved smoothly, but once fitted I couldn’t get reverse gear.

Inner weld was interfering with the heim joint, preventing it from swinging far enough to engage reverse.

Doh! The cause was some buildup from the weld, which I had overlooked. Once filed back to be flush with the housing, the shortened “remote,” as gearbox builder Rover calls the linkage, worked fine.

Shortened remote (top) positions shift lever six inches further forward than stock unit.

The forward placement is necessary to accommodate the stock trim piece, which surrounds the lever.

TR8 gearbox now has shift lever exactly where stock TR6 lever emerges.

Proper lever placement will allow the car’s interior to be indistinguishable from a stock TR6. Only the V8 engine note and much faster acceleration and top speed will distinguish this rodded ‘6 from a factory example–that is, until I throw in a Muncie four speed and NOS mid-’60s Hurst shifter.

Fuel leak fixed (for now) with JB Weld.

Made one further fix. The top of my Rochester 4GC carburetor had a hole near the fuel line fitting. Some piece may once have gone there long ago, or a factory plug fell out. I had drilled and tapped the hole and stuck in a plug, but fuel still seeped out. JB Weld made for a quick fix, but I won’t leave it that way. Although that stuff hardens like a rock, I don’t fully trust its purchase in this situation, where I’ve pushed a blob of it into a tapped hole. The hardened plug could, conceivably, pop out after sustained exposure to pressurized fuel. (Gas shooting on top of your hot engine is bad.) I have another 4GC so I’ll pirate the top from that one. A few fittings are different, but it’ll work. That project will likely turn up on these pages.

Keep tinkering.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 21st, 2007 at 9:57 pm and is filed under Car parts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.