Shifter issues should be fixed!!!! Sweet!

[Trango]

Hey guys,

I am about to go freaking postal here. I need to fabricate a shift tower for my 6853 tranny. The goshdarn unit I have keeps breaking. It's a cast unit, and I've taken the TIG to this thing three times now, and even with the most diligent pre and post heat and care, I am convinced that this is just going to continue to break (and it's doing it even outside the HAZ of my welds).



If you can follow this, you realize that my shift tower now looks like bride of frankenstein. Moreover, it's probably so shocked from all the welding that it will honestly be a miracle if it's strong enough to live out its service life (and it was probably weakened in the past from some traumatic event, which is why it cracked shortly after install).



Now, I was wondering what these Dana shift towers look like inside. I see a pin going side to side through the top of the shift tower, which presumably holds the swivel mechanism for the shifter stick itself.



I have no problem fabricating the base and upright for the shift tower, but what about the swivel mechanism? I don't want to totally destroy my stock piece if disassembly will do so, so I'm asking here on the complete offchance that someone has ever taken one of these apart. That part where the swivel attaches is the only unknown... otherwise I'm good to go to make the entire rest of the tower out of 1/4" and 3/8" plate.



By the way, I THINK I've fixed the issue that was causing it to break in the first place (there was a clearance issue on the 1-R dogleg that I remedied yesterday)... of course the fact that I'm about 30 pounds away from a one arm pullup on my right arm doesn't help either.



Thanks in advance

Bob

 

[Trango]

So, I am fairly sure I've fixed the internal problem that was causing the dodgy shifting. There is this small "dogleg" or shift extender/helper inside the shifter tower on the 6000 series that extends extra low to engage the shift rail on the 1-R. It was binding on another shift rail, so I radiused some edges and now it glides smooth.


Here's the welding and gusseting I was talking about.







This pic shows some of the joy:

1. the highly welded (repairs from breakage) shift tower

2. the mods to the bellhousing I had to make to fit the top cap of the tranny (!!!!!!!!). More TIG work again to plate the whole area with 1/4" steel.

3. The "slight bend" to the shifter stick to make sure it cleared the dash. There's quite some torch time in that! I wonder if all the heating and torquing I had to do to that piece is one reason the tower started cracking in the first place.



The much larger rad I put in (the stock one didn't fit anyway, what with the much larger fan and its placement:





The mounts for the rad (these are chevy body mounts!) and this also shows a shot of the outboarded steering I had to do, along with the cut and rewelded pitman arm (!!!!!) that I needed to install to make sure the tire wouldn't scrub at full lock to passenger:

Here's a pic of the beast under the hood:





Anyway, the delays of the internal shifter issue, having to raise up the tranny another inch to compensate for poor initial measuring, and some other fun stuff is why I haven't gotten this flying yet, but it's a couple of days away from exhaust now (just have to move some wires away from the manifolds!).



Getting there

Bob

 

[red devils dude]

good to hear you got it fixed love the cat didnt know you were doing a swap.