You older guys remember back in the day there were umpteen companys producing aftermarket shifters , fenton,shiftstar foxcraft and on and on,some good some not so good.Anybody got their favorite or most hated shifter? Here`s mine.My 53 Merc of course had 3 on the tree and I went shoppin for a shifter.As most of my buddies at the time I had very limited funds and bought a FOXCRAFT shifter.After I don`t know how many times crawling under to unlock the gears so I could get goin again and thinkin I didn`t install it right or had it adjusted wrong I started asking some older guys for advise and told them what was goin on.Every one of them said pretty much the same thing,"Yea mine did too,rip it out and buy a good one,foxcraft sucks" My lesson on pay a little more,avoid headaches.
My least favorite was one that a car club in my area made up from the regular column shift mechanism. They used U clamps for fastening to the transmission arms and all-thread for the connections from the actual shifter to the shift arms. It worked ok for normal shifting, but no quick shifts. Plus you had to butcher your floor to get the thing to fit. But for $12.00 you had a floor shifter. My fav was a in-line Drag Fast shifter. You pushed down on the shifter and pushed it forward for 1st gear then straight back for second and back forward again for 3rd. It came with a rounded shift knob but I put a T handle on and that shifter was kewl. I had a Hurst in-line 3 speed in my new '65 Mustang that was nice too.
My '66 Pontiac 2+2 had a factory Hurst 4 speed shifter that had a LOT of wear in it. If the ash tray was open, while power shifting 2-3 you could close it with your knuckles. Damn, that hurt!
I had a Fenton in my '56 Victoria (this was in 1966). Bought it at Advance. It was an automatic and when I changed it to a 3 speed I did not want to do a column.
I had the $9 shifter in my 53 chev, was not great but would shift finally did some syncros in and used 47 parts to fix it money was mighty tight then i rember punching holes in the gas tanks on all my old cars and draining them and cutting the gas with used oil, not much for speed or performance that mixture
i copied one for a 56 pontiac trans that was 50 plus bucks in the early 60s. 5/8 shift rod. piece of angle iron, one pillow block bearing and it would shift with any of the 4 speeds at the time. it did reverse the shift pattern. i could not break it in several years of drag racing. that old trans. had a funcky shift linkage from the factory.
I had a Hurst Syncro-lock Three speed linkage in my 56 chev. fastest shifting gate ever had.unfortunetly the tranny's didn't. blew the syncro hubs out of 11 , before i was able to afford a t-10 4spd .got to where i could change atrans in 30-45 mins .at the time you could buy a used trans for about $20
I had a blue light special(K-Mart) in 1963. It was a Spark-O-Matic. Put it in first, take off, hit it with the side of your knee, and it would shift to second--fast! It was spring loaded and one of the best shifters I've ever owned. It was so good that I had it in 3 cars before I finally sold it with the last car.
i HATED the 3 on the tree in my dad's 81 f-100 stepside, the linkage had skewed so it was a fucking puzzle from 1st to second and from 3rd back to second.
That would have been the same selector three speed that Olds used from '51-'63. It sounds like you copied the DragFast shifter. Did the shift pattern end up ass backwards?
Most hated shifter was one I bought for my '50 Merc from Service Center, think they were in Compton (?). It was painted ugly brown and the paint was so thick the shifting arms wouldn't move, very poorly constructed (weld splatter all over it), I finally just threw it away.
I've had a couple that I didn't care for. Put a Sag syncro 3 gear in a little olds once. Bought a used Sparko-Matic from a fella for a buck. It cost me 6 bucks to buy bushings etc. It worked OK but I never liked the feel of it. Traded it and a 4 track tape player for a Hurst that was loose and spent anoth 6 bucks on Bushings etc. I really like Hurst shifters. Had a '64 C-10 that I put an L-79 with a Muncie behind it once. A friend gave me a Hurst with a pistol grip out of a MOPAR that he said would bolt right up. It did because he had welded a GM mounting plate to it. Reverse wouldn't work so I had the reverse linkage rod poked up through the floor. If you remembered to put it in neutral first you could pull the rod and hit reverse. One night I got a little loopy and managed to catch my pinky finger between the floor and the shifter rod. At the Emergency room the lady that was going to stitch me up had a name tag from OB/GYN. I got real scared and said, "Common lady, I need a finger doctor." 6 stitches and 150 later I decided to pull the shifter and figure out how to make it hit reverse. Really liked that shifter after that.
Spark-O-Matic was my first shifter - 48 Merc....after that, we started making them in metal shop - not quite the quality, of course, but fine for anything but all-out speed shifting. This was in HS and nobody could afford a T-10, so 3spds and 3spds O/D were it. Had a Fenton or two in subsequent cars - no complaints. First high-dollar shifter I bought was a DragFast for the T-10 in a 57 Vette. Was living in Seattle at the time - D/Fast was a NW company and the shifter was purchased at a speed shop (name escapes me, but an old friend - Arvin - worked behind the counter) just north of Renton. I like D/Fast's cool shift knob (sort of a delta shape). When I was a little further along in life (and earning power) it was either Hurst or B&M. just sold an old Dual Pattern shifter I had on the shelf for years to a guy rodding a 57 150 Chev dj
The stock floor shifter in a ugly Valint slant6 was so bad,any slighly hard shift it would come out of arm brackets and fall over on the floor under dash
I've got one of those shifters lying around someplace---I think I actually could have done better in junior high metal shop.
61 Impala w/ fenton, Hard shift to second would take the ring right off the synchronizer drum. At first its was backward pattern, that was fun.
Had a 55 Chevy 2dr Bel Air Sedan 16 years ago that had a 70's Hurst 4 speed shifter in it that someone hacked the linkage and rewelded it.It was a nightmare to drive, never got a chance to fix it because I was T Boned in that car and it was totaled.
My favorite was the Hurst "Verti-gate" shifter in a 304/4-speed Gremlin I had years ago. Pull up on the little lever and pull back to shift into first. From there, it was slam it straight forward for 2nd, slam straight back for 3rd, and slam it straight forward once more for 4th. Never missed a shift. My least favorite was the stock 4-speed floor-shifter in a Mercury Bobcat pos. It utilized a nylon ball-and-socket pivot-mechanism. I remember it coming off in my hand one morning on the way to work...had grease all over my good white shirt by the time I got it reassembled. LOL. A high school classmate had a SuperBee with the pistol-grip 4-speed shifter. Big guy...Ted was his name. I remember him showing off his bloody knuckles after slamming his fist into the dash during a hard shift. LOL.
In high school I had a '56 Ford hardtop with a 272, three-speed. I salvaged a shifter out of a burned-out '57 Ford convert. Never did know what brand it was. First time I hooked it up, I had one trans. lever going up and one going down. Gave me a weird shift pattern until I re-did my mistake. Anyway, it was a cheap shifter, but a hundred times better than the stock column shift. At the time, I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. In about 1980, I bought a new Chev shorty pickup with a three speed. Put in a top-of-the-line Hurst shifter. It would have been great, except for the monkey-motion linkage that ran back up to the steering column to operate the backup lights and ignition lock. Finally junked that part of it.
Took a Hurst 4-speed shifter out of 67 442,put it in my 55 Chevy,best shifter I ever had,My older brother came home one weekend from service and had bought a brand new Super-Bee with a 383 4-speed ,I couldn"t help but laugh at the shifter handle,looked like it should be in a semi truck ,had to go about a foot between gears.
I had a car that I put in a V-Gate shifter. I think it was Mr Gasket brand.... most people that got into my car would just stare at it, wondering how it worked. I really liked it, shifted great, and made a mechanical noise when it shifted. cool a friend once remarked that it was a great theft preventative shifter, because no one knew how it worked a quick googleing found a photo of one
one I forgot, had a 40 pontiac, had a single shift rod and went in and out for the gate on the trans being i was a broke kid, i copied one out of a magazine, of course mein lacked some refinement kind of a backwards conglomeration had to swing the lever front to rear witha big shift rod, with a trouble light handle on the shifter, i lived on a farm and thats all i could find, had to learn to weld quickly if i wanted any non genuine hot rod parts about 10 years later i started in stock cars and brand name parts were on the menue then, if its worth doing its worth doing to excess
I have always used Long shifters. I have one on my Richmond and I don't think it is possible to break it.
Hurst mystery shifter in my 55 ford 272 more door. No stops in it and wrecked 10 -12 sets of three speed transmission syncos from power shifting. It also almost cut off the tip my left index finger when I was taking it apart to make some stops. One of the flat internal wave springs inside caught my finger while sliding it out and those things edges were so sharp I didn't even know I had been cut down to the tendons until blood started getting all over anything. Still have the scar 40 years later.
I built a 3-speed shifter in high school. Made the slider pin on a lathe in shop class. Didn't even have a car at the time. We put it in my brother's '52 Merc a few years later.
My brother had a '51 Chevy back in the day, and was going to the junkyard to look for a floor shifter, but had already removed his three on the tree linkage. So, he bolted two rods to the trans -- one controlled first and reverse, and the other for second and third. He just left the trans access plate off, and you shifted one lever at a time, making sure the other one was in neutral when you did. Worked fine, but when we stopped to pick up a hitchhiker along the way, he asked to be left off about two blocks later.
YES SIR!!! these where cool, hurst syncro-loc. you had to pull a pin, and it was a in line shifter If you didn't know , and tryed to drive it it was a pain in the ass!! the hurst guess gear!
After a few street races with my 55 column shifted Chevy I decided to get a floor shift. Didn't have much money so I got a Foxcraft. Soon started pronouncing that differently. Saved up for the Hurst S/L I should have bought in the first place and 45 years later I'm still driving a car with a Hurst. Learned a life-long lesson about cheap subsitutes.
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