Re: 1941 Packard 110 - Column Shift Adjustment Help!

Posted by Ragtime Kid On 2014/6/6 0:06:50

Thank you all so much for the thoughtful and very helpful responses! I really appreciate it.

DrewLA, your description exactly matches what I've got on my hands and thanks to the great detail you provided, I spent several hours today taking all the linkages in the assembly apart and cleaning them up.

As you suspected, there were spring washers in every joint and a large amount of side-to-side play at each connection. Tomorrow I will remove the spring washers and take up all the gap with additional metal washers to remove all that slop. I also found one of the bellcranks had a bronze bushing at the center that was worn obong and rocked side-to-side on the post it rotates on. I drilled that out and resleeved it with a new bronze bushing from the hardware store and now it sits straight and rotates freely on its shaft, so that ought to help.

I'm still not entirely clear on how best to move the reverse engagement point as far away from neutral as I can but suspect I can accomplish this by shortening the turnbuckle connecting the bellcrank to that 1st-Reverse shift fork.

My understanding is that if the two castings on the steering column rod are lined up perfectly straight (using the 3/16" drill-bit as a guide) and with the shift lever perfectly horizontal on the steering wheel, the transmission should be in neutral. Starting from this reference point, if I screw in the turnbuckle connecting the 1st-3rd bellcrank to the shift fork on the transmission, I am moving 1st gear slightly closer to neutral and 3rd gear the same amount farther away from neutral.

If that is correct, would it make sense to bias it this way so as to allow myself a margin of safety when going through the H-pattern from 1st to 2nd so as to avoid inadvertent contact with reverse in case I move slightly too far up during the motion?