Thread: 4-spd top loader shifter

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When I put the Muncie in my '59 Chevy pickup, I got a Hurst Competition Plus shifter for it. On the tailshaft housing, there are five bosses for shifter mounting, three above two, and they allow a forward or rearward mounting position. The Hurst was set up to use these mounting points, but when installed, even in the forward postion, the stick came through the floor just under the front edge of the seat, with the seat all the way to the rear, and the shifter was so far below the floor that I would have had to cut a hole a foot long to allow full stick movement. So I did a bit of old school hot rodder engineering, and made a bracket for the shifter that bolted to the three forward mounting points, and moved the shifter mechanism up and forward by about six or eight inches in both directions; the pivot bolt of the shifter body is just below the floor, now, and I set the point of forward mounting so that there was full movement of the stick mounting arm, and got a stick from Hurst that fit my needs; they sell them as aftermarket items in many shapes and lengths. I still had to reshape the stick a little, but it looks as if it was made for the application - well, I suppose you could say it was, couldn't you. Anyhow, I reworked the shift rods - cut, bend, weld, rethread - to work, for first/second and third/fourth, and made the reverse linkage with a single acting toggle or bell crank mounted on one of the mounting points on the tailshaft housing. I don't have any pictures, or the ability to attach them here, even if I had them (computer glitch), but if you would like to contact me by e-mail (should be in my profile) I will make you a rough drawing and mail it to you. It took a bit of experimenting and messing around with it, but it works like a charm; has for over twenty years, even under racing conditions.