Has anyone converted a '50 ( '49-'51- '52) Plymouth with 3 on the tree to 3 on the floor, and if so, did u fabricate the parts or were u able to buy a shifter kit?
http://store.summitracing.com/egnsearch.asp?N=400134+303490+115&autoview=sku ebay has about a dozen of them too
I don't have one, but I did it on my buddies plymouth fury 3. Converted to 4 on the floor. I wasn't around for all of the fab work but from what i remember there was some fab involved. Not an insane ammount, but we rented a plasma cutter and welder so he could get it done.
my recollection is that the early Mopars had a selector shift tranny and your regular big bucks "Sparkomatic" shifter for standard Chev/Ford/other two-shaft trannies didn't work on the selector trans. Somebody must still make something that works. I was a V8 man in HS but one of the upperclassmen had a hot 49 Plym 4dr with finned alum head, 2 x 1, split exhaust and a floor shift - Cat's Pajamas, man. dj
My first car, got it in the 70's was a 64 Chevelle 2 door. I put a Hurst Indy 3 speed shifter in it. Easy conversion. It had a near stock 6, chrome reverse wheels, jacked up in the back, nice red paint job, I was cruising!
You have a selector trans in that Plymouth. Ansen made a shifter for it. It also fit early Buick and Olds. None of the 2 arm, Hurst style, shifters will work. Someone out there has one, I'm sure.
Back when men were men and women were proud of it I did this conversion. These trans do not work in the conventional way in that one lever is first and reverse and the other lever 2nd and 3rd. Intead one lever is the forward or rearward gear position and the other lever selects which group it being used (1st and rev or 2nd and 3rd) I bought then a Fox Craft shifter for my car and it worked but it is very different from a Chev or Ford shifter for the reasons mentioned above. It has a rod on the lower end of the stick for shifting the one lever but it and a rub rail just under the boot and hinged so when I pushed the shifter over to the side it moved against the rub rail and that cause a rod attached to the rub rail to select the next grouping of gears. I would think that somewhere in the USA and Canada some guy has boxes of these wierd shifters but doesnt know what they fit. They wont go on anything else and by 57/58 the newer three speeds were of a more conventional style and could use a universal shifter. The early mopar ones though cannot. Don
They can be found only after you tell the shifter guy at teh swap meet how they look. Then he says either "OH SHIT, I threw all of them away two years ago 'cause nobody knew what they were!" or "WOW, thanks for the info man, I've got several of those at home but didn't know what they were. I'll let you have one for $300!". You know the last time he carried them to a swap meet he sold them for $40 because he'd never had anybody ask about them before.
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