3-speed OD shifting

Posted by 55PackardGuy On 2012/7/22 16:37:58

Upon recently driving a '54 Clipper with 3-speed on the tree and overdrive, I encountered the following:

Difficulty shifting into 1st.
Some of this may have been my unfamiliarity with the car, but it seem that even with letting the gears roll a bit to reach first from a stop, they never wanted to line up on the first try. Also, coming to a stop and shifting from either 3rd or 2nd to 1st, half the time I wound up in 3rd again.

I've heard that the trans is a Ford, which brings back memories of a '60 Falcon that balked like this. Sometimes all you could do was go to reverse, down to neutral, up to second, down to 3rd and finally up to neutral again and THEN down into first. Kind of a pain on a hill.
Any fixes for this?

Steering was loose.
This car had power steering and brakes. Very smooth and tractable around town, but on the highway, it had a tendency to wander and need to be "driven" with frequent corrections. The car has about 80K on it. I'm thinking loose steering box or bad ball joints.
Any other ideas?

Power brake (Crash-o-Matic) pedal was very firm, little travel, but stopped the car without undue effort.
Are the firmness and lack of travel particularly bad signs? What might need attention here? (Besides just scrapping the whole thing.)