Bolt it up. You need to find the shift lever from a floor shifted car like a Mustang etc, and swap it as the lever on a column shift will be inverted most likely. BTW there was no 289 in '74 unless that was swapped.
Well, Ford stopped 289's in 68 If it came from a small block it should go back on a small block. Get the block plate, it locates the starter. Pour some solvent in the torque converter, spin it around with the input shaft and drain. Keep doing this until the solvent comes out clean. Drain with the drain plug. If you have a few extra bucks, change the front and rear seal, gear selector seal and pan gasket. Floor shift gear selector arms point up, column arms point down. You can flip them over but the ratio won't be perfect, still plenty of floor shift selectors out there. Easy to get a parts mixup with old C4's. there is a 147 and a 164 tooth flywheel with dedicated bellhousings, 24 tooth inputs, 26 tooth inputs, case fill, pan fill, pump mount bell and case mount bell.
The shift pattern will likely be backwards if the tranny was originally column shifted, so if you put a floor shifter in, "park" position would actually be first, etc. I dont know what its called in an automatic tranny, but whatever "body" the gear selection shaft goes into in the tranny has to be changed to correct the selection pattern. I was told by a tranny shop that this is possible. I am unsure if there is sufficient clearance on a C4 to change the arm your linkage goes to (could depend on your application). On my C6 there was not. You basically have 3 options: 1. Leave it as-is and try to get used to putting the shifter into 1st gear position for park, second for reverse, etc. 2. Change out the part of the transmission to the correct part for a floor shifter. I recommend this option since you havent installed the tranny yet and have easy access. 3. Do what I did, and make a little interchange lever (turns on a central axis) that reverses the position. I'll post a pic of the shifter linkage rod before and after so you see what I mean.
The Jalopy Journal
