Thread: Converting Chev tilt column to floor shift

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Well Brian this seems to be the fourth different thread on the same topic, namely Camaro steering columns. Anyway, I am sorry to learn that you are so frustrated with the situation and may be past possible reassembly. I am close to that feeling also, but your comments have been quite helpful to me and I thought we had worked out the solution using information from Henry Rifle and lt1s10. My bad luck is maybe good in that I have been stalled by a strange phenomenon wherein my usual Rustoleum black paint would not "wet" parts of the housing holding the turn signal. I sanded and scuffed the Camaro "blue-gray" paint with emery paper but in spots where there must have been some sort of oxide the spray paint just moves away from those places! Thus I have sanded parts of the column three times and had to wait for the next coat of paint to dry. In the meantime I learned a lot from you and others here so at the moment I am mildly optimistic that I can put it back together with the new cylinder and the new turn signal mechanism. Then the plan is to make a parallel rod that will be attached to the Lokar shift rod that will connect to the grommet on the lever at the base of the column. As you mentioned, the arc of the lever will not be exactly in the same plane as the motion of the Lokar shift rod but still forward is forward and back is back and in fact I think all that has to be done is just to move the rod into it's extreme position when the Lokar rod is also in PARK and it does't matter where the lever moves to when the Lokar rod moves back.. That way I hope to retain the lock condition when the Lokar shifter is in PARK. If the connection rod has to be bent around a header pipe I think that can be done because as I said the only thing that matters is that forward is forward and back is back for both the column and the Lokar shifter. I am sorry that you had trouble with the shifter device, but if you think you can reassemble the column I would suggest just removing the shifter arm, covering the hole with a sleeve and then try to keep the lock mechanism the way I am going to try to do it with a secondary rod between the column lever and the Lokar shift rod. Sometimes it is good to just close the garage door and sleep on the problem, but of course these adventures make time loss and when innovation is involved (even when this problem has probably been solved by other rodders!) it just takes time for the solution to sink in. As a last resort we can then use what we have learned on another Camaro column or break open our wallets to get a Flamed River or Ididit column. By the way, does that mean that those columns are NOT lockable?
Another possible problem occurred to me in edit mode, namely if the Lokar shifter has Reverse past the Park position then you/we will have to adjust the length of the rod, but what happens past that position? I think, not sure, that PARK is past REVERSE on the 700R4 and so the extreme forward position is PARK?????

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder