I went out and moved a bunch of spare parts out of the way that were stored in the vehicle and looked at the shifter that is in the vehicle and even though it is a 53 it has the later two pin shifter. I am limited in what I can do in this part of the season, my garage is not big enough to be pulling transmissions inside. But it appears I might already have the later transmission and the extra transmission top cover I have appears to be NOS, or at least it was before being stored in a bag full of moisture. So I am going to clean that up and try switching the tops and see how it works out. I found the shifter was not tight on the transmission shaft due to having the wrong bolt in it so I fixed that and it tightened up the shifting a little but it is still not right/ It will go into first gear no matter where you push up all the way over to the far right. It hits the gate and slides left into first unless you are holding tight to the right to get third. Third to fourth is also interesting as you come out of third and kind of have to come back to the left to get third and not reverse. So the top has to come off no matter what. I have driven enough old trucks and tractor trailers to be able to find my wat around loose shifters but this one is quite the challenge.
