Hey all,

Great new forum! I was wondering if there would ever be a trans. forum here like there is over at Chevelles.net...

Anywho, on to my question. I am making some progress on my PG to TH350 swap(slowly). The last thing I did on Sat. was hook up the shifter cable & brackets on my new t350. I am using a Shiftworks conversion kit & a new reproduction stock shifter cable.

I can get the proper dimensions per the Shiftworks instructions, but the shifter will not shift the trans. down into drive, 2nd & low gear unless I get under the car and manually pull it down into the lower gears by hand. Strangely, once it is in low gear, I can shift it back into park with the shifter (stock horseshoe) with no problem.

The new cable appears to be in an "S" shape in order to connect up to the bracket on the trans.
I suspect that the cable shape is the problem, but I don't see how else I could route the cable for less of an "S" shape.

Any thoughts on what to do? I saved the old shifter cable just in case...

Thanks,
Mark P.

I'm not a tranny expert, but I have had some problems hooking up the shifter linkage.

It seems strange that you can shift by pushing, but by pulling. Are the shifter cable clips installed correctly? There is one at the front of the shifter and one at the front of the bracket that mounts to the tranny pan. There is also an adjustment screw where the cable bolts to the shifter. If any of those are loose then it can cause problems try to shift gears. If those are all good, maybe it's a bad cable.

It took me a little while to get everything all adjusted on mine and those little cable clips are a PIA!

One should be able to manually select 1st gear on the trans, then adjust trans shift arm and cable adjuster for the end of the cable to slide onto the pin on the trans arm.

Are you sure all brackets all installed correctly? I know you've been taking your time putting this together to be sure its done correctly, but, there still may be a chance something is aloof.

Yes, the "S"-bend on the cable doesn't help much to push into gear. I had to get another cable for mine when I converted from THG350 to P/G. ;)

Ditto the binding cable. A bound up cable may not move, but if you can at the trans by hand, find another route for it, or change the cable to eliminate the binding! smile.gif

Is the new cable longer than the old one? I just did this swap last August, and used the Powerglide cable with the Shiftworks kit, and had no problems. GM used the same cable in both PG and T350 console applications.

Thanks for the replies all. When I removed the old cable, It was also roughly shaped in an "S" pattern from being in the car all these years.

I bought a stock replacement cable for a T350 and I quickly compared the old cable to the new one and they looked to be the same length.

However, I had to bend the eyelet of the cable 90 degrees to get it to fit on the pin of the shifter bracket at trans. Maybe this is contributing to the problem.

I may try to re-install the old cable just to see if it might work better. And yes, those clips on the shifter & trans. are a pain in the rear to re-install...

Originally posted by Granny's 69:
I had to bend the eyelet of the cable 90 degrees to get it to fit on the pin of the shifter bracket at trans. Maybe this is contributing to the problem. Could be. Are you using one of those universal cable brackets? On my 68 with a 700R4, the original owner had mounted the bracket such that it was a real strain to hit 1st. I removed the bracket, turned it upside down and backwards and it worked fine. Iteally, the cable should intersect the bellcrank about half way up from the lowest to highest location of the hole. In other words, the hole in the bell-crank will be highest in 1st and lowest in about neutral. Cable should be somewhere in between the two. Somehow I don't think I explained that very well.

-dnult

You should not have to bend the eylet.
They can be awkward to fit with the trans in the car tho; :mad: I had quite a struggle to get mine on but once there works perfectly