'55 Customline 3-speed on the column shifter position

[Rusty Pancelode]

Originally Posted by Ford Freak

I am a life long car enthusiast & have never heard of this modification. Perhaps a previous owner only had one arm? The '56 I bought last year was messed up, but nothing like this! lol Your '55 looks like a nice car, so personally I would hunt down another column and put it back to normal. F F

My dad was a life long auto mechanic and he'd never seen it either.
He was really intrigued when I told him about it, but he couldn't remember how the shift mechanism came apart and he's not up to messin' around under hoods anymore.

The car is pretty decent, and I'm happy with what I paid for it, but it's definitely been modified in several different ways.
Some are good... some are like this shifter. LOL

I did find a PDF document this morning that describes how the shifter assembly comes apart, so it looks like I can partially disassemble it at the bottom (under the hood at the shift levers), flip the shift rod 180* to clock the shifter correctly, then reassemble it to put it back to normal.

I figured it had to be something relatively easy to do, or else it wouldn't have been done in the first place.

Once I get around to tearing it apart, I'll come back and let everyone know the results.
Right now, there's another project in the way.