Hot Rods Need Top Loader 4 Speed Advice.

I think the part I bolded above is where you are getting to the root of the problem. Can you grind a little more clearance to keep this from happening? Or somehow stiffen up the 1-2 fork so it doesn't shift the small amount to catch the reverse fork?

 

38Chevy454 that is just what I was figuring on doing. Just needed to determine if I can take a little off of each fork in the area where they interfere with each other and see if that will do it. The forks are pinned to the rail which has to slide back and forth so there is no way to prevent that little bit of rotation that causes the interference. Thanks.!

 

Strange, I had a Kubota 4x4 tractor that was a top shift type like the Ford/Jeep and it would hang up every now and than and sometimes not even go into second. Split the tractor and removed trans for rebuild and found nothing wrong 3 TIMES! There was never a gasket under the shift housing to trans housing and I called a Kubota shop and they said we never use a gasket anymore just gasket sealer. After the 3rd time putting it together I made a thin gasket for top plate and sealer and never had another problem. Apples and Oranges I know but it is the little things that can cause the big problems!
EDIT; the top plate was seating down a minuscule to low without gasket and shift forks were bottoming out on gear.

 

Also remember getting a David Kee rebuild kit for a Mustang 4 speed top loader and it showed that atleast one top cover bolt was shorter than the rest and needs to be installed in correct hole. Sorry I can't find the instruction sheet to take a pic of for you.............

 

No brigrat! It could be something as weird as that too so it all helps and I appreciate it. Will also look into that. I also bought the rebuild kit from David Kee so I think I have his instructions for the rebuild here somewhere.

 

I have done a few of these conversations without issues. It's not something that you power shift, but more than suitable. I always do these things:
* I strip the trans and grind out the suggested clearance areas in the top of the case. Some say they don't need to, but the original conversation did.
* Use a new shift lever retainer spring. A lot of the Jeep off roaders lock the shifter up alot and the lever spring always seems to be a big part of the issue.
* Use one of the several OEM Jeep shift levers. Every shifter that I have seen made by welding a lever onto a Jeep stub, especially if longer, never worked well.
* And obviously inspect all of the shift cover parts. The only parts that seem unavailable are the rail detent springs. I have tried some substitutes some said worked, but found then too stiff.

 

Jim thanks.

I pulled the transmission apart and rebuilt it before I used it. While I had it apart I clearenced the case for the Jeep shift tower and forks to drop in properly. I had a used shift tower from a T176. I put it in the car and drove it for a little bit. Worked fine for awhile. It's a new build I am debugging so there was no power or speed shifting because it is so new I was afraid I would break something. Plus it is a very gated shifter so it doesn't lend itself to doing that and I was cognizant of that from the start. The shifter locating pins were sloppy in the old tower/cover and when this first happened I suspected it was because the shifter was slapping around on the pins. So I bought a new tower and shifter and moved over the parts from the old tower. Put it back in the car. Worked briefly and the shifter locked up with it in reverse again. So I figured the old parts I moved over must be the cause. So I got a new retainer and spring, a new full shift lever, (had the new tower already) a new first to second fork, new third to fourth fork, new reverse fork, new shift lug, as well as a new spring loaded reverse lock out lever. All of this went into the new tower with the only original parts being the shift rails themselves, the interlock wheels, the detent balls and springs, and the hold down plates to lock this all in place. Same result. First through fourth no problem. Go into reverse it moves the reverse arm forward and then pops out of the gate and hangs up. I can see this while shifting it on the bench. Did it when I put it back on the trans as well.

One question I have is if the slots for the detents are worn, or the balls are worn, or the interlock wheels are worn, or if the slots they go in on the rails are worn, could this allow the shift forks to move too far and thats why it keeps popping out of the reverse arm gate and locking up? I am just about to get new rails, new interlock wheels, and new detent balls to see how they do in helping to solve this.

 

I guess I'd start with the cheaper stuff first. Examine the rail detent cutouts. The rails wearing would be down on my list of failures. Did the detent springs have any compression left in them? Or did they stay compressed when you remove them? I have found a number of springs that no longer had much compression left in them. Not sure why with all of the other cover parts easily available that the springs are not. Some use a transfer case spring by Omix-Ada # 18674.31. I found them a bit too tall and stiff. To use them I needed to trim some off to soften them up a bit. I have never found detent balls worn, but they are cheap to replace. Sounds like you have covered most of the bases. Wish I had more.

 

Thanks. I am looking into the balls, springs and rails, right now. The rails are hardened steel and don't look like they have much wear on them. The springs had some bounce to them but I have nothing to check it to. For instance what is the normal length of them new? Mine are .830 in length and about .312 dia. I was thinking of putting a small washer down in the hole for them to increase the pressure on the ball a little bit. The balls all look good. No galling or scoring of any kind and nice and round. I think if I can figure out why the reverse arm moves to far I could solve this. It's what seems to be allowing the shifter to move far enough forward to pop out of the gate and hang up.

 

Just for my own information when you do this conversion what stock parts don't you put back in the trans?

 

For anybody still following this tale of woe an update. I pulled all the parts off the shift tower. Did a bunch of measuring and do not see any significant differences from the old tower to the new one. Did some measuring of the forks and other parts and they are mostly pretty close dimensionally, best I can tell without blueprints anyway! The rails are not worn at all that I can see. I checked the detent balls and springs and they looked pretty good. Springs still had resistance when compressed but seemed a little short as the balls set low in the holes so I added a .060 thick washer to each spring hole and reinstalled the springs and balls. That stiffened up the action quite a bit. Put it all back together and with the new shifter handle, or the old one, while shifting it on the bench I could get it to lock up. This time just going from first to second. The end of the shift handle, old or new, could somehow slip past the lug to the upper left of it between the lug and the reverse lock out. The first picture below is one that I took after removing the shift lever while it was locked. You can just make out the end of the lug about the middle of the gate to the right of it. The second picture is the neutral position from when I installed the shifter to the case. Watching the forks and moving the shifter handle on the bench it occurred to me that the forks are captured in place inside the trans and not able to float around when shifting so I set it back to neutral position then installed it on the trans. Checked it again and it was still in neutral and all forks appeared to line up properly. Installed the shift handle and locked it in with the new retainer and spring. Just manually shifting it in the shop without road testing yet it did all the gears and did not flop out of the lug the way it did previously. Tomorrow if it isn't raining I will do a little road test to see what happens. Fingers crossed as I don't have much faith in this... oh, the third pic is of the old lug I took out and you can see how much wear there is on the reverse lockout side of it.

 

Any updates?

 

Sorry been taking down Christmas decorations and cleaning up all the crap from the holidays... bear with me and I'll get er out as soon as I can for a test.

 

Ok guys sorry for the delay in follow up. Life got in the way a bit. Put the shifter back in the car and fired it up and ran it back and forth on the street. No faith in taking it too far yet! It worked properly and didn't lock up surprisingly! I'll have to spend more time in the seat before I can categorically say it is repaired but I'll do that as much as I can when I can and come back in a while with how it's going. I think as a back up plan I am going to see if I can find a t5 from an S10 or something and gather up the parts to install it if this thing gives me anymore grief.

 

So basically, stiffer detent springs and new retainer and retainer spring?

 

Woodsnwater it looks that way. So far as I haven't driven it much. Once I put a few miles on it I will know better.

 

Is it fixed or did you move to the S10?

 

1oldtimer. Once I got a quick test of it and it was working ok I took the car apart again for some other repairs. I replaced the front axle, spring, steering column and box, added a pan hard bar, replaced the exhaust manifolds with headers, and redid some parts of the exhaust system. I am just getting it finished up again and expect to put some miles on it this coming week. I'll come back to report on how it is going.

 

Were you able to fix this? I was planning on using this shifter into a 1964 Ford toploader 4 speed myself. Where were you finding replacement parts?

 

Hey guys better late than never! For those interested in the the top loader issues I have been driving the car a lot now and the problems I was having appear to have been caused by not using the stock bolts which had a shoulder on them that act as a locator for the top cover. I think there were 2 of them originally. although I was not aware they came this way from the factory as I used the ones which came with the transmission. They align the cover and shifter and hold1 everything in place and keeps it there. Plain bolts and washers don't cut it. I couldn't find shoulder bolts in the size I needed so I found some bushings that I could put into the bolt holes which align the cover the same way. Then it doesn't matter if you uses regular bolts or not. So far in about 500 miles of driving I have not had the shifter get locked up at all. I am cautious when shifting from reverse into first however and do it slowly. all that being said if I were to go through this type thing again I think I would just put in a t5 and be done with it. I do have one on hand now just in case. Hope this helps someone.

 

@GordonC Where did you purchase replacement parts?

 

The shifter replacement parts or bushings?

If shifter parts the parts for a Jeep T176 fit and I think I just shopped them online. There are a lot of Jeep parts places.

For the bushing I measured the depth of the bolt hole in the trans case and the cover together to get a length. Then I measured the diameter of the hole in the cover, which is the same as the hole in the trans case. Then the diameter of the bolt. This gave me the length of the bushing, outside diameter of the bushing to fit the case, and the inside diameter of the bushing to allow the bolt to pass through and drop into place. Then I just did a search on google for bushings of that size. A number of places carry them. If I recall they were pretty inexpensive. It's been a little while but I seemed to recall they just dropped right into place. If anything I may have had to adjust the length so it was just a little below the surface of the cover when it was set on so the bolt would cinch down tightly.

(Note: Some holes are blind holes and some are not. I used 2 that were blind holes and not through. If I recall looking down on the transmission from the drivers seat I used a lower right bolt hole and an upper left bolt hole. These provided the orientation required to locate the cover when it is slipped down onto the bushings.)

Quadratech was on of the Jeep companies that had most of the parts.

Hope this helps.

 

@GordonC Thank you. I was referring to the Jeep parts. I see a ton of suppliers, but just wanted to go with a known reputable supplier if you had one you used. Thank you.