transmission shift lever

[Tom Endy]

In the past few months I have had two customers bring me a transmission tower for rebuild. They also brought along a reproduction shift lever they bought. I suspect they all come from the same place somewhere in Taiwan, regardless of the supplier.

The first customer had the lever snap off just above the large pivot ball. The supplier was reluctant to take it back because he had had it for several months. After some wrangling the supplier sent him another in exchange. This one had a visible crack just above the ball. This one was also returned. The third shift lever was the one I installed, and I wished him good luck with it.

I have heard stories of a number of these reproduction shift levers snapping off.

The second customer's shift lever I installed just a few days ago. When I finished I found I could not move the lever, the small ball was jammed in the fork slots. The forks I used as replacements were originals with little or no wear.

I disassembled the tower and measured the diameter of the small ball and found it was .520". My understanding is that it should be .490" to easily fit into the .500" fork slots. I had to grind some material off the ball to get it to fit. I suspect the chrome plating may have been the culprit. I have a jig I use to grind the weld on an original that has been welded up.

The moral to this story is that there are some very poor quality reproduction transmission shift levers in the Model A kingdom. So beware.

Tom Endy

[H. L. Chauvin]

Hi Tom,

As always, thanks for taking time to warn us.

I can just imagine the look on a Model A driver's face after he gets to the top of a hill; and,

1. Levels off at 50 mph; and,

2. Slows down, double clutches; and,

3. After he tries to downshift into second on a very steep downgrade, he looks at his wife; and,

4. Shows her the broken shift lever he is holding in his hand.

[Brentwood Bob]

An AS moment.
Bob

[msmaron]

has happened to member of our region and there are so many originals available, all you need to do it take the time to look.....or pay the price later!

[George Miller]

Did we not have some guys tell us, the other day we should not complain about poor parts. That we should just take what they give us and be happy.

I guess that they never had a shift lever break off in there hand. Thanks for letting us know.

[H. L. Chauvin]

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Would be interesting to find out "who" offers these hazardous "life threatening" devices to the public.

Almost as bad as selling Chinese black powder fire crackers to small kids in "Tootsie Roll" wrappers.

[Tom Bellfoy]

after doing a search I found this thread pertaining to the transmission shift tower on the 31 Model A. Last year I purchased a nice looking chrome shift lever from one of the major suppliers and now my shift lever is loose, in other words I can rotate the shifter to the right or towards the passenger side, I can bring it back the same way and find my gears, Is this another symptom of the chinese knock-off garbage ? what is the fix if I want to keep it ?
Thanks

[Marshall V. Daut]

Take a look at the shift lever among the photos of my friend's "warmed up" chassis that I posted last week. I'm also re-posting one photo here. The shift lever - like the rest of the chassis - was pitted and ugly when I started to rebuild the chassis. The chrome platers in this area are either lazy or crooks, no other possibility exists based on my experience with them. So, having the lever locally re-plated was not an option. Remembering Tom's warning from last year about repo shift levers, I took a different route - and one that looks more authentic and "old timey" to me than chrome.
I first used an 80 grit disk on my air grinder and removed all the pits in the metal rod. This took the lever down to bare metal. Then I started with 80 grit sandpaper on my orbital sander and removed as many of the swirl marks as I could. This took quite a bit of time. This was followed by progressively finer wet-dry sandpaper work from 180 to 220 to 400 to 600 and then 1000. I occasionally found overlooked grind marks that had to be individually re-sanded before moving on. As each finer grit sanding was completed, the shiny metal shift rod got smoother and even shinier. Finishing off with 1500 and then 2000, followed by rubbing compound and then Semichrome polish made the lever look like it had a Butler finish. In a nutshell, the metal rod's steel was polished to a high luster. The polishing grit was removed and the shift lever sprayed with clear enamel. Perhaps not good enough to fool the judges in a car show, but judge for yourself if the results are worth the time to save an original shift lever. And it won't break like repos. I have used this same procedure on spark and throttle levers on the steering quadrant and they look great. I haven't plated or bought new arms for years!
Marshall

[Mike V. Florida]

Originally Posted by Tom Endy

.

I disassembled the tower and measured the diameter of the small ball and found it was .520". My understanding is that it should be .490" to easily fit into the .500" fork slots.

I wonder if this could have been done on purpose. It was not that long ago when the forks were not available in reproduction. The average owner does not have access to a welder and mill to restore the originals. So the "easy" way would be to spec out a larger ball to fit the worn forks. Something like the head gaskets we use now, the cylinder opening is larger than the revision one gaskets. And what about the brake linings, thick and thinner for use on new and older drums.

Not saying it is right but it might be the case.

[captndan]

Answered my question about "replace with a chrome repo or re-paint the old one".

[BILL WILLIAMSON]

Tom Endy,
Was the broken shifter one of the "screw" together type?
Bill W.

[George D]

My reproduction lever did the same as in post seven, just started to turn left or right. I discoverd that it was made in two pieces sleeved together and silver soldered. Never even made it out of driveway on maiden voyage, this happened about four years ago. Advice: fix your old one

[JohnLaVoy]

I'm not sure if KNS is the manufacture, they have made many improvements in their products in the last few years and this problem has been eliminated in their current parts.Mitchell manufacturing uses their shift lever in the transmission they build and knew there were some problems years ago but they had not had a problem recently. So perhaps these were old stock from various suppliers.

[Tom Bellfoy]

since I bought the chromed repro shift stick because it would dress up the inside of my coupe and it looked good, I decided to removed the transmission top and tig weld the two pieces together. with the new rubber boot you cannot see the weld. easy fix if you have the tools, just a bit of .work

[Kahuna]

I haven't had a Model A for a few years, but what's wrong with having the original rechromed?
Are repo new ones that much cheaper?

[Mike V. Florida]

Originally Posted by Kahuna

I haven't had a Model A for a few years, but what's wrong with having the original rechromed?
Are repo new ones that much cheaper?

You have to find someone to weld it up and grind it round. How many hours is that at xx.xx per hour. Then you need to sand down the shaft to make it smooth and polished. Now ship the shaft to a plater and have it plated.

Repro is 40.00

[Steve_Mack_CT]

Unfortunately I bought one of those repro towers last summer before Tom's helpful post. Around 200 - 250 miles on it, and never did go into second easily at all (on our second "A", owned the first one for a long time so I could tell something was just not right beyond just breaking in the new part) & I have been having thoughts about replacing it.

Well, went on a nice 45 - 50 mile run yesterday, and 5 miles out from home, I downshift to 2, seems ok, but next stop light - and I cannot find any gears?? Well somehow managed to but the shifter is flopping around everywhere - luckily only had to stop twice the rest of the run home - got home to find the lever cracked exactly as described in the posts above. Real garbage. I guess I am lucky it did not break clean off...

Well over a year since I bought it, but will be in touch with the supplier anyway to see what they will do. I did ask the supplier about quality when I bought it because at $125 it seemed odd that the rebuilt units were more. This was the response of the person I spoke with - "Well that is because we make them new, and it is cheaper than the disassembly/cleaning/parts/reassembly with the rebuilt units." OK, my fault to some degree for not following the old "if it seems to good to be true" adage but these guys should not be selling something with a track record of failure. In fairness, I have not been in touch with them yet, will share this thread with him to see if he is willing to do anything here.

At least we got home with just a couple of grinds and aggravation but a lesson learned...

[glenn in camino]

Originally Posted by Tom Bellfoy

after doing a search I found this thread pertaining to the transmission shift tower on the 31 Model A. Last year I purchased a nice looking chrome shift lever from one of the major suppliers and now my shift lever is loose, in other words I can rotate the shifter to the right or towards the passenger side, I can bring it back the same way and find my gears, Is this another symptom of the chinese knock-off garbage ? what is the fix if I want to keep it ?
Thanks

The same thing happened to me on my 1930 deluxe delivery about 150 miles from home. It was difficult, but I could find my gears and I got home. I removed the trans. top, unscrewed the upper part of the lever, and screwed it back together with a good dose of red Loctite. So far, It is holding.

[John/CT]

Club member had a shift lever break on a recent tour. He was able to nurse it home with some gentle, judicious shifting. The rebuilt tower was less than 6 months old. Snyder's acknowledged the problem and replaced the entire tower paying shipping both ways.

The only shifters they can get are manufactured in two piece. The parts are threaded, screwed together, welded and chromed. Some of the welds are not perfect. Unless you shift very gently the weld could fail.

Bravo to Snyder's for handling the problem professionally.