How to bend shifter

M

Mark-Ia

Junior Member
An older friend of mine wants to bend his shifter on a 30 Model A Roadster for more leg clearance. How did you do it?
 
Grab it with both hands and bend it where you want it. Don't let the force be against the forks.
 
If he is looking for more leg room to get in and out he can just lift the shift lever up and swing it out of the way. To bend it, I think the best advice would be to take the lever out of the transmission and bend it in a vice. Protect the lever with pieces of aluminum or copper. I think there is too much risk to the forks to bend it in the car. Getting the lever hot will make it easier to bend but will compromise any plating or paint.
 
I absolutely would not bend it. I’ve done another fix for tall guys before. If you remove the shifter bell tapping it loose and off and then slightly lift up to remove the pin in the shifter housing. Once removed you can rotate the shifter to see how it aids leg clearance as necessary. It makes the shift pattern closer to the passenger but overall it’s worked for some super long legged guys. Once placed mark it with a sharpee marker and then you can decide if you want to drill a new hole in place with shifter housing in place or remove to redrill at the bench. If you decide you don’t want that locating anymore, sell the car or whatever just lift up the lever and relocate back to the original pin position.

For life of me with this option I can’t see why anyone would even try to bend the lever.
Jut my take after many years of service and inventiveness. I have detailed this before on the barn.
Larry Shepard
 
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It can be bent cold - enough to give a bit more leg room - especialy useful on RHD cars as the standard LHD lever ( which presuably all new ones are) is just a bit too close for comfort .Just make sure you don't put any force on the selector forks.- take care.
 
In a RHD car the handbrake is on the left of the shifter The shifter tower is RHD specific and has a AF prefix part number . This applies to the later tower where the handbrake is on the side . I have a car where a previous owner put a lazy dogleg in the shifter to move it to the left.( RHD) I tried to straighten it in the car but it seems to be spring steel so no go it would not straighten cold i.

John in sunny Chandler AZ
 
Some of my club members have tried to bend reproduction shift levers and said the repros just snap off--too brittle.
 
I heated both of mine to make the adjustment. I also removed 3/4” from both peddles. I’d have to experience Larry’s procedure to fully understand it. Photos may help?
 
KenBolton said:
I heated both of mine to make the adjustment. I also removed 3/4” from both peddles. I’d have to experience Larry’s procedure to fully understand it. Photos may help?
Click to expand...

Ken
I’ll see what I can do this week. Have a couple of trans to deal with this week so will work on photos. It actually works great and you can put it back to standard without damaging anything or removing the shift tower .
It’s pretty slick.
Larry
 
For travelling down the open road, lift the shifter lever and swivel it up to the right out of your way. Pull it back to position, it'll snap in place.
 
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