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Thanks for posting that. I wondered if anyone had tried something like that. It would be nice if you could buy the spacer pre machined. Anyone want to make some and sell them?
This is a great idea. I've got a T-5 in my shed been throwing around the idea of swapping out the 700r4, If I do, I'll totally use this. I've also come across 6 speed that came out of a 4th gen lt1, Do you know if you can do this mod to them, or does that transmission already have a short throw shifter?
I tried out this mod and thought I'd resurrect this thread rather than starting a new one.
The process is pretty straight forward and mine came out good, I have one tip though. The hole you drill in the shift lever must be very precise! The mill I was using has a shitty vise and the lever moved slightly when I was drilling it. The hole didn't go through perfectly centred and now when my car is in neutral the shifter leans a bit to the left. Basically if I push it straight forward it goes right into 1st. So far it hasn't caused any drivability issues it just took a few rows through the gears to get used to. If you're a better machinist than I am, this won't happen to you!
As for the feel, I can say it is greatly improved! The total travel at the shift **** is reduced by probably half and it feels a little bit more "notchy". I can definitely shift noticeably faster. It's not as good as a Hurst or Pro 5.0 kit, but for $10 in aluminium and a couple hours of work I can't complain!
I tried out this mod and thought I'd resurrect this thread rather than starting a new one.
The process is pretty straight forward and mine came out good, I have one tip though. The hole you drill in the shift lever must be very precise! The mill I was using has a shitty vise and the lever moved slightly when I was drilling it. The hole didn't go through perfectly centred and now when my car is in neutral the shifter leans a bit to the left. Basically if I push it straight forward it goes right into 1st. So far it hasn't caused any drivability issues it just took a few rows through the gears to get used to. If you're a better machinist than I am, this won't happen to you!
As for the feel, I can say it is greatly improved! The total travel at the shift **** is reduced by probably half and it feels a little bit more "notchy". I can definitely shift noticeably faster. It's not as good as a Hurst or Pro 5.0 kit, but for $10 in aluminium and a couple hours of work I can't complain!
If you were to do it again would you make the offset more or less than 1" (and how much?).
The spacer plate would be easy to make for someone with some basic machining equipment (bandsaw and a mill would cover it), but without checking actual dimensions (guessing at about 4x5", I could be off) and looking at ebay and some online suppliers buying larger pieces and cutting them up would run about $10-20 in materials, so plates would probably have to be priced at least $20-50 to be worth doing (depending on how much time you spend making it pretty).
Why waste time on the stock shifter? A good aftermarket piece with positive stops isn't that expensive.
Well, some people are just cheap.
In my case I can't really tell you why my T5 is still in the car (besides that I just haven't swapped the 4L80e that I built for it yet), I'm sure I have a block of aluminum sitting around and I just put a new DRO on the Bridgeport and locating the holes by DRO (in something really non-critical) is a good test of it...
AKA, it's a good excuse to spend 30 min tinkering with something I already have... and the time spent is well short of $190 for a new pro50 shifter.
In my case I can't really tell you why my T5 is still in the car (besides that I just haven't swapped the 4L80e that I built for it yet), I'm sure I have a block of aluminum sitting around and I just put a new DRO on the Bridgeport and locating the holes by DRO (in something really non-critical) is a good test of it...
Why waste time on the stock shifter? A good aftermarket piece with positive stops isn't that expensive.
Well for me it was a combination of factors. I'm in Canada, so a Hurst or Pro 5.0 shifter ends up being about $400 once it shows up at my door. Also, once I inevitably blow up up my T5, I'll probably swap to a T56, so I don't see the point in investing money in a transmission that won't take much abuse anyway.
I got the Aluminum for $15 and did all the machining during my down time at work. I enjoy machining and rarely get a chance to do it anymore, so it was more of a little project to work on during the cold dark months.
In no way is a replacement for an aftermarket shifter, but for $15 and a few hours of work, I'd say it's a fun little project with a good payoff.
Originally Posted by 83 Crossfire TA
If you were to do it again would you make the offset more or less than 1" (and how much?).
If I was going to do it again, I might try a 3/4" offset instead of 1". It would probably be easier to get used to, but I'm happy with how it's working out so far!
If I was going to do it again, I might try a 3/4" offset instead of 1". It would probably be easier to get used to, but I'm happy with how it's working out so far!
Huh... well since i have a bridgeport, a big face mill will make it any thickness I want it .
My only stress about it is that I'll want more when I do it. I still need to find a little time to go out and measure. I suppose that I could just make it and cut it down in increments slightly larger than the pin diameter (the closest distance I could drill a new hole without wasting time patching the old one)...
Last edited by 83 Crossfire TA; 06-17-2017 at 04:49 PM.
I could machine the spacer for somebody if they want to provide the measurements. I have a bridgeport and lathe in my home shop. Like you said turd_gen, this can help us up in Canuckistan as we get ripped on aftermarket parts prices.
I could machine the spacer for somebody if they want to provide the measurements. I have a bridgeport and lathe in my home shop. Like you said turd_gen, this can help us up in Canuckistan as we get ripped on aftermarket parts prices.
If I've still got the print I made on my work computer, I'll post it here on Monday
Originally Posted by 83 Crossfire TA
Huh... well since i have a bridgeport, a big face mill will make it any thickness I want it .
My only stress about it is that I'll want more when I do it. I still need to find a little time to go out and measure. I suppose that I could just make it and cut it down in increments slightly larger than the pin diameter (the closest distance I could drill a new hole without wasting time patching the old one)...
Must be nice to have your own Bridgeport!
For reference, I just went out and measured the distance from 1st gear to 3rd gear at the tip of the shift **** and it was 2.5". I wish I had measured the stock distance, but this should help you determine how thick you want your spacer.
If I've still got the print I made on my work computer, I'll post it here on Monday
I'd love to see it if I don't get to mine before then...
Must be nice to have your own Bridgeport!
I am very much the guy that will buy tools to make something rather than buying the something... I also used to do custom fabrication for a speed shop and occasionally trade labor/take home work from a machine shop so this kind of thing just followed me home
For reference, I just went out and measured the distance from 1st gear to 3rd gear at the tip of the shift **** and it was 2.5". I wish I had measured the stock distance, but this should help you determine how thick you want your spacer.
Well, conveniently I just measured mine with a tape measure and shot a video... it looks to be almost exactly 5" travel
My dad was a toolmaker. He found an older Bridgeport (from the '70's in the corner of a storage room at a shop he worked at (they were using newer machines in the toolroom). He asked the owner of the company about it and for the price of scrap, we were the owners of a Bridgeport mill.
My dad was a toolmaker. He found an older Bridgeport (from the '70's in the corner of a storage room at a shop he worked at (they were using newer machines in the toolroom). He asked the owner of the company about it and for the price of scrap, we were the owners of a Bridgeport mill.
Same sort of thing happened with our metal lathe.
when it comes down to it it's easier to buy a bridgeport (I picked mine up for $1200 with a DRO, x-axis power feed, phase converter, set of hold downs and a ton of tooling, the owner was converting to a new mill that did not use R8 collets so gave me all of his R8 stuff) then it is to move it, put it somewhere.... a big chunk of iron that weighs almost 2500# can be a headache.
Yeah I didn't have a boring head handy so I just used a 3" hole saw in the mill. I haven't had an issue with it yet.
Honestly, I spent about 20 minutes on it so far, I cut out the block on the table saw and bored the hole on a drill press using a hole saw (2 and something inches, whatever the standard doorknob hole is). With a dial indicator on the table saw, a metal cutting blade and a dial indicator with a magnetic back I can cut it to about a .001" tolerance, really way more accurate than necessary. Really I don't see why someone that knows what they're doing couldn't make a crude looking block in 30 minutes to an hour using any sort of saw that will cut aluminum and a drill.
I cut it out of a piece of 1" stock, but I'm thinking about milling it down to about .7-.8", and if I do that if it's already mounted in the mill I'll likely just mill out the opening to make it pretty (make the block lighter )
The process is pretty straight forward and mine came out good, I have one tip though. The hole you drill in the shift lever must be very precise! The mill I was using has a shitty vise and the lever moved slightly when I was drilling it. The hole didn't go through perfectly centred and now when my car is in neutral the shifter leans a bit to the left.
If you did this do you have any pics of the parts, specifically drilling the hole?
After taking the shift tower apart I don't see how this will work on a 3rd gen shifter. The stock shifter is bent right where the pin goes through it and it is drilled at a compound angle. If you drill it above the original point the shift lever will go into the transmission at a different angle and I don't see how it will line up, as in the ball at the end that fits in the pocket will be WAY off. There is no being accurate with your drilling that I can tell that would make it better, if anything you might be able to do something drilling it at a funny angle to get it all to sit crooked and still work.
It's hard to tell but the shift lever bends right where the pin goes through it
turned slightly, you can see it's not a straight fore and aft or side to side bend, it's in 2 axis, and if you redrill a new hole for the pin above the original hole the lever/ball will no longer sit under the pivot
Huh that's strange, mine had a similar bend, but if I recall correctly it was 2-3" above the original hole. I don't have any pictures on my phone, but they might be backed up on my laptop at home. I've suspected for awhile that there's something fishy about my transmission because my car was originally an automatic and the previous owner that did the swap was a bit of a butcher.
I've debated drilling a hole approximately .75" (that's what I milled my block down to) above the current location (it would be a guess since there is no straight line to measure on), just to see what happens, but really don't see how it would work.
The shifter in the article is an S10 shifter, which I suspect like the mustang T5 is mounted straight up (ours are mounted at a 15* angle) and has a straight shaft through the tower.
The S10 OEM shifter is already longer from ball end to fulcrum, which is necessary due to the much longer handle stick.
Also, it points back at maybe a 45 degree angle.
Keep in mind, the guys doing this shifter mod are running an S10 trans./shifter in a lot of instances are doing so because they want to use a shifter opening far forward of where it is in the T5 third gens. In the T5 S10, ergonomics and shifter travel is improved /shortened if you run a third/4th gen T5 or T56 shifter position with a much shorter stick. No third gen had a bench seat, so the shifter position is far less compromised.
I have driven F-body T5 cars with a Hurst, and with a higher-fulcrum S10 shifter back to back. The modded S10 shifter isn't impressive, given both were used with a "short" F-body handle stick length in the first place.
I am going to officially say, THIS IS A COMPLETE AND UTTER WASTE OF TIME.
Since I wasted my time making a precise spacer block (it didn't need the tolerances that I made it to, but since I was screwing around and it didn't really take much longer I cut it to within .001" of what I measured, and .750" thick: Milling to .750" thick
I decided "well while I'm here, I don't think it will work but lets figure out a .750" offset for the pin hole and see what it does to the shifter position. Well I measured around the bend both ways and figured out an average position for the new pin hole, bored a slightly undersized hole and then reamed it to size:
Oh, and mind you that pin was not easy to remove. It wasn't moving with a hammer so I ended up using the press to press it out.
I pressed the pin into the new whole and tried reassembling it both ways, just to see if the bend in the bottom of the shifter stick will position it close enought to be usable. Well no dice, the bend in the stick just offsets where the shifter tower wants to be and both ways placed it nowhere near anyplace reasonable. This was the closer of the 2 positions, and the bottom metal pocket that the ball sits in hits the bend in the lever so even if you made an offset spacer plate it will still not work, the shifter won't travel far enough to get all the gears: This is about as close as you can get it to line up
to add insult to injury, after spending a few hours confirming that what I was fairly certain wouldn't work actually wouldn't work, I learned the hard way about what happens when you try to push a hardened pin out of a bend in a lever where you can't get things lined up perfectly:
Yes, my pin sheared off trying to press it out of the new hole in just above the bend in the stick >:-(
Dude that sucks! If I had known this would be so FUBAR on anyone elses car, I would have never recommended it!
I've got no idea why my shifter is different from yours, I would have thought all V8 T5's use the same parts. Hopefully you can find a new pin that will work in your shifter, maybe you can use the spacer as a custom billet cup holder
The pin broke close enough to the middle and the hole is tight enough that I just chamfered the broken ends and pressed both sides in till it was centered. It seems to be fine, at least for the short drive I took it for.
But again, total and a complete waste of time and a $10-20 chunk of aluminum...
07-25-2012, 12:11 PM
Carry on. 
. 
