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Quote:
Originally Posted by mrtexas
My 89 year old dad claims that if the transmission is in 3rd gear you can lift up the shifter and reposition it anywhere you want and later return it to the original position. Is this true or just the musings of an old codger? He worked in a gas station while in College at Gonzaga University in Spokane, WA in the early 1940s fixing all manner of old cars.
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If you look at a shift lever and the transmission top you will find a large pin through the center of the upper pivot ball and a corresponding slot across the the transmission top at the ball socket. This is an indexing pin that keeps the shift lever from rotating. Obviously the infamous and sometimes dangerous (with careless removal) tension spring on the lower end of the lever keeps the lever seated in that upper ball socket and that indexing pin in it's slot. If you lift the shift lever (fighting the spring tension) up about 1/4" so the indexing pin clears the top of it's slot in the transmission top, you can then rotate the shift lever. The pin will be resting on the very top of the housing until you rotate the lever back into position OR 180° from it's normal position at which time it will snap back down into place.
Yep, I was about fifteen years old when an "old timer" showed me that trick. It wasn't until a couple years later that I tore apart a transmission top and realized just what was going on there.