Some of you probably already know that I purchased "Bandito" the black/black 91 plus from YZF ford. Before I even bought the car I have had plans to fix everything and re restore it to make it perfect again. After making my 1500 mile drive back to CO from NC I was excited to get started on the car and what better thing to start on than the shifter. I had never driven a car with a rod shifter because my previous 4 shos have been early generations with cable shifters but I knew there was something not quite right with this one so I lifted the car up this weekend and removed the SHOrt shifter and the rod assembly to find this.
Since I have been learning to weld I figured this would be a good opportunity to practice so I welded up the cracks.
Then ground the welds down to make it smooth as new. Cue a spiffy new paint job on the rods and shifter mounting plate and reinstalled it in the car.
After finding the old thread from the SHOrt shifters I noticed there was an updated version from the original like the one that was installed in my car. The newer version had braces to support the shifter on each side. Probably to keep it from breaking the shifter plate like mine did. so to somewhat recreate the support brackets I drilled and tapped a hole in the side of the shifter body.
Then reinstalled the shifter to the plate in the car using this 1/4 inch metal strap that was already installed in the car when I disassembled it and bolted the support strap to the body of the shifter. Hopefully it will be stronger and keep it from putting to much strain on the plate again.
My only question is does anybody else have one of these early SHOrt shifters that has had this problem before and is there anything else that can or should be done to prevent it from happening again? If not I figured it would be an interesting read for some members.
Since I have been learning to weld I figured this would be a good opportunity to practice so I welded up the cracks.
Then ground the welds down to make it smooth as new. Cue a spiffy new paint job on the rods and shifter mounting plate and reinstalled it in the car.
After finding the old thread from the SHOrt shifters I noticed there was an updated version from the original like the one that was installed in my car. The newer version had braces to support the shifter on each side. Probably to keep it from breaking the shifter plate like mine did. so to somewhat recreate the support brackets I drilled and tapped a hole in the side of the shifter body.
Then reinstalled the shifter to the plate in the car using this 1/4 inch metal strap that was already installed in the car when I disassembled it and bolted the support strap to the body of the shifter. Hopefully it will be stronger and keep it from putting to much strain on the plate again.
My only question is does anybody else have one of these early SHOrt shifters that has had this problem before and is there anything else that can or should be done to prevent it from happening again? If not I figured it would be an interesting read for some members.
