I don’t know if this fits on-topic or not, so I’ll put it here in OT land. I haven’t been on here much lately, but I’ve been busy. After ~10 years of driving my ‘37 Chevrolet as an automatic (700R4), I decided that it needed to be a manual five speed. The first hurdle sounds simple, but took a bunch of time to figure out. I didn’t build this car originally, and don’t have a lot of information available on the parts used. There’s a lot of junkyard engineering here. Not bad, just unknown what it came from. For a manual, I need a clutch pedal. There’s not a lot of room in the footwell. When I got the car, it had one of those big rectangular GM power disc brakes pedals in it. I cut that down, and swapped on a smaller Camaro pedal pad with its stainless trim. So there is now some room. Not a lot. The challenge here is that I don’t know what this pedal ***embly came from. I don’t want to change the brake pedal, that would require reworking the brakes. A trip over to my local muscle cars parts place showed that this is not a muscle car pedal, they are all much shorter. So I spent a lot of time looking at eBay and various forums to find pictures of pedal ***emblies. Eventually I came to the conclusion that this pedal ***embly is late 70s to early 80s square body truck (Blazer, etc.). I found a local guy with a late 70s Blazer and it matched up. Talked over the project with American Powertrain at their booth at Power Tour 2026. Found that they have a hydraulic clutch pedal setup for these trucks, as a retrofit. They don’t know if it will work for me, but it’s a good place to start. I blocked up the master cylinder and removed the brake pedal ***embly. The original manual trucks had a different stamped hanger, with some additional support, and room for the third pedal. The automatics, like mine, don’t have room for the pedal where it needs to fit. But a few minutes with a cutoff wheel solves that problem. Here is the new pedal temporarily mounted on the hanger, with the brake pedal. Also shows the 1/4” steel adapter that attaches the hanger to the underside of the dashboard. All of this won’t go in to position, the column is in the way. It has to be ***embled in place. Hanger goes in, then build the rest on it. I was very happy to find that the back end of the hydraulic cylinder clears the fuse panel. The pedal spacing is probably great for a truck. Not so much for a 37 Chevy. Made a new pedal pad from 1/8” steel, and picked up another matching rubber pad and stainless trim from my local muscle car parts place. Cut off the pedal pad. Can’t return the parts now that I’ve started modifying them. I borrowed a press from a friend, and straightened out that dogleg at the bottom. That makes the pedal arm too long, but I have a grinder and cutoff wheels. Welded on my new pad. Re***embled everything under the dash again. With the pedals back in, this is very drivable. I spent some time driving around and pretending to have a manual, to get used to the position of the clutch pedal. My DD is a manual, and has been for 30+ years, so I don’t need to learn to drive a manual, but I do need to get used to this car. Should work out ok, I think. So I ordered the rest of the parts I’m going to need.
Time p***es, a few hundred pounds of boxes get delivered to my driveway . I bought an ATV jack off of some guy on FBM. Some dis***embly of things later, the 700R4 is on the floor. Also removed the trans cooler, janky cooler lines, and the electrical and vacuum lines needed to run the lockup converter. Unboxed the new TKX and temporarily installed the shift lever. The directions want me to check to make sure it shifts in to all six gears before installing it. It does. They sent it with their “mid shift” conversion. This mounts the shifter as far forward as possible. Notice that the 700R4 has a Lokar floor shifter on it. I already have a hole in the floor pan.
168 tooth flywheel installed. Checking bell housing runout. I made a dial indicator mount to get it in the hole, using a HF magnet and some bits of steel. It’s a pain to turn the engine from the front while trying to watch the dial indicator on the back. So I mounted my phone to a jack stand, and used my iPad to view it via FaceTime. Now I can turn the engine and watch to line up the dial indicator. Horizontal is perfect. Vertical is close enough. No offset pins needed. Clutch installed. I did this part a few times. Just having the plastic alignment tool isn’t enough. The clutch really needs to be pretty close to perfectly aligned with the bearing in the back of the crankshaft. Installing the release bearing on the trans. This is temporary. It won’t fit in to the bell housing like this, and has to be ***embled in place as you insert the transmission. The hydraulic lines go out the clutch fork hole.
With a custom wood block, lifting the new transmission in to place on the ATV jack. I had to remove the shifter for floor pan clearance as I got the trans into position. Lifting the trans, lining it up with the bell housing, clutch splines, release bearing, and crank shaft bearing is a pain in the ****, but I got it all in there eventually. It did take a few tries, and not a little swearing. Pleasant surprise, the crossmember fits right back where it was. I was expecting to have to move or modify it. Even better surprise, the shift tower pops up right in the old floor shifter hole. Minor t******* needed to get access to the bolts to reinstall the tower, but it fits. Mounting the reservoir for the new clutch master. There was already a hole in the firewall here, I don’t know what it was for, it had a rubber plug in it. It was too small, so I punched it out to a larger size and put a grommet in it before routing the supply line to the clutch pedal under the dash. It’s a little too billet pretty. I may try to tone that down, maybe engine turn it. We’ll see. Needed a new starter. The bell housing doesn’t fit the old style of GM starters. Local “starters and alternators” shop hooked me up with this geared starter. Driveshaft installed. I mistakenly ordered it with a 1330 U joint, needed a 3R to mate to the diff. So I had to get a conversion U joint from NAPA. 1330 on one side, 3R on the other. While I was working under the dash, routing the hydraulic lines, I wasn’t happy with the wiring to the column. I chopped off about 8” of wire, re-worked the harness, and installed new connector plugs and pins for the column. Cleaned up the routing. Also sewed up a quick little black vinyl and Velcro cover for the bottom of the column to hide the harness routing. Last piece installed, the shift knob.
You will love it. Had a tko in my 37 and have a tkx in my Camaro. tkx does shift a lot better from 2nd to 3rd
Hard to beat 'rowing-thru-the-gearz' .......(unless you live in Atlanta) !! Enjoy...Nice write up 6sally6
Thanks for the detailed writeup! It's not something I plan on, but the ***le made me think someone wanted a list of what to do, not share How It's Done!
I love the Facetime ingenuity. Also I would say this belongs in the on-topic forum but what do i know? Great write up.
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