1955 Ford Club Sedan Refresh Blog

[Hot Rod Reverend]

I have moved into a nice development called Ashton Woods. The kids and the wife like it - I personally don't care for it. Everyone is right on top of each other, no room for anything, etc. That crazy basketball goal even got egged early this week. There is a nice pond just behind the house though that we have already been fishing at and it lays pretty nice. We are renting for now and are going to spend some time looking around the area at different properties.






The big deal - I now have less than HALF the space I had in the old Y block skunkworks out in Capon Bridge, WV, where we lived. The garage had ONLY ONE OUTLET and then only two light bulb fixtures. We fixed that pretty quickly. No subpanel in there, no wiring for a compressor, etc. I am lost. I had to rent a 10x10 storage unit in Milford to hold the extra parts and what have you.





There is a large, dry basement though and you can imagine how much I have stored away down there.

If you have any tips on storage solutions and space-saving ideas - let me hear them!

On a different note, I am putting a youtube video of the 55 rolling out under its own power on the trailer. Once I have it loaded up I will post a link. I have not run it in 2nd or 3rd, but of course the thing was only wired and plumbed to be loaded on the trailer and go into the garage under its own power. I am kind of thinking though that we have a binding problem with the extended clutch push rod. I wanted to go with a floor shift anyway.

[Hot Rod Reverend]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKFOQ0RzxMk

link to the video of the car being loaded

[scicala]

It looks like you lost the argument. Reminds me of my 2nd house where my wife got all of her wishes, and I got none. Good luck working things out.

Sal

[Hot Rod Reverend]

I have not passed away, I am still alive and still have a 55 ford in the garage! I have been very busy with work and travel, and upgrading my one outlet garage with new electrics and now piping for my air compressor I plan to pick up next month. The blog will continue, I promise.

[frank long island]

good luck in your new homestead it will all work out in the end you will find ways to make it work. I had the same problem when my mom sold her home went from a comfortable 2 car and a basement workshop to a 1 car no basement levitt home as I said you find ways to make it work

[Hot Rod Reverend]

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Been a long time and this move has been a real kicker, but I have finally been able to get back into things here and there. First up are a few photos of a Christmas present for my dad. I took a 55 Ford Mainline Headlight Hood and turned into a clock... I think he will like it.

[Hot Rod Reverend]

Also trying to figure out a Hurst Syncro Loc Shifter that I just had delivered... not quite sure I have it all right. Maybe I can put a post up elsewhere to get some help in some questions. I could not get the shifter to go into 1st or R (just sitting on the bracket, no arms attached). Can I hook the arms up with the levers on the side of the transmission in their current position or do I have to turn these upside down. It looks as if they need to stay down from what I can tell. How do I get the OD lockout lever in a position to move because of this bracket setup - will the current position work?

check out the photos and fire away with any helpful comments. The shifter is only 12" above the mechanism (including the ball)... not sure this is going to be tall enough in the car.






Any ideas on what the bracket and rods below might be for?

[jsprengeler]

Welcome back -I've missed your posts!

[Hot Rod Reverend]

And I have missed a lot of time in the old garage!!!



You can tell by the photos above that the lever was hitting the Hurst Bracket and leaving that small arc of grease. I put the bracket in a vise and carefully nudged it over with the vise to make the bracket widen out a little bit. This gave me about an 1/8" clearance and I am pretty happy with it after bolting everything up it looked pretty good.



The shifter shifted into all positions just fine tonight with 0 play - nothing seemed sloppy at all. I did have one shifter rod from Hurst and kind of mocked it up in the shifter and put it up to an original lever on the case (after flipping it upside down). I know that Hurst made levers to replace the originals but I think these were all flat stock right? Seems like the offset of the original levers would help you keep a straigther rod since the line looks very good. Maybe Hurst uses levers that essentially have a shorter arc because they are smaller?

[Hot Rod Reverend]

Before I give you part 3 here, let me say I am very happy that I have a duplicate transmission out of the car. The constant adjusting, fiddling, bolting/unbolting, removal, installation, etc is quite easy since there is a transmission on the bench.

Ok, so today the postman leaves me a couple of boxes on the doorstep (actually 3 boxes but the third box contains a pair of Holley 94's to rebuild). One box holds a very nice Mastershift with a nice handle that is LOOOOOOOONG compared to the syncro loc I have and the other box contains Hurst shifter hardware arms and the like, prebent specifically for this overdrive transmission.



Photos of the rods installed on the syncro loc....



And photos of the Mastershifter (I am told it is the updated version of the syncro loc)




While things look good if you look closely you can realize that when the shifter is in second the rod is interfering with the shifter case... reason? The Mastershift case is slightly larger than the old Syncro Loc. Also, if you look at the bracket you will find that where the pivot hole lined up for the Syncro Loc, the hole does not line up for the Master Shifter.

I like the Mastershifter and the option to change out shifter arms pretty easily. It is definitely "larger and heavier" than the Syncro Loc.

Back to the bench and more modifications... time to elongate some holes and to bend a rod ever so gently.

[Hot Rod Reverend]

Look what Santa brought me for Christmas...






Yep - it is a Syncro Loc shifter, NOS, with a removable shift lever. The brackets and arms in the box are for Pontiac, but the bag of hardware should also be handy!

[Hot Rod Reverend]

And here is the install of the Christmas Hurst Syncro Loc...



for the sake of reference, here is neutral



1st Gear



2nd Gear



3rd Gear



What a smooth little shifter she is too.


The line up looks good and all things are finally normal. I guess the 3rd time, er... 4th time is a charm? Now to get down to brass tacks and get this installed on the transmission in the car. Hopefully I will have some time to do it this weekend. The installation looks straightforward enough.

Anyone out there in need of a Master Shift unit or the other Syncro Loc I tried? they are for sale for what I got in them. [email protected]

[miker98038]

Once it's properly adjusted, you're going to love that shifter. I had a couple in the old days, nothing better on a 3 speed. Great find.

[Hot Rod Reverend]

You know those times when you hear someone say, "This won't take long, only an hour or two?" and then you end up spending most of your day tackling a job that throws every problem in the book at you? Your situation defies the odds and unlike the average completion time for the project you end up adjusting, tweaking, cutting, drilling, adjusting some more, assembling, installing, re-installing, etc, etc, etc. To top it all off I even lost about 7 important pictures from my crazy camera that somehow "corrupted" photos I took!

I lost track at the amount of time I spent under the car today but the end result was extremely SATISFYING!

We will start from the beginning.



Since the old transmission on the bench was an excellent means of mocking up all of the parts for the Hurst Syncro Loc floor shifter, it was time to remove the stock Ford shifter rods and install the assembly. Easy breezy right?

After removing the original shifter arms and levers on the side of the case I installed the Hurst levers as pictured here:



That part of course was pretty easy and went well. I made sure they were on the correct pivot and oriented correctly. Next, time to remove the two upper bolts on the case and install the main bracket that looks like this...



That was a little more difficult than I first expected - there is very little area above the transmission tunnel and your hands get awfully big under there when you are trying to ratchet on things and get everything connected!





The passenger side attached pretty quickly but the driver's side was a bear - that is the side where all of the shifting, hardware, and speedometer cable go. I had to make some adjustments but as you can see at least the overdrive lockout lever still moves freely. Glad I got that one corrected on the bench!

Next came this bracket...



It attaches up front at the top bolt that secures the solenoid to the transmission...



The two holes at the rear of this plate line up with the main bracket and both holes are the attachment points for the shifter itself. This part went well - no hangups.

Now we come to the shifter. The first thing I did was to put the neutral rod in place (white, L-shaped rod in the photo below)



This white rod needs to be in place when you are lining up your shifting rods that go from the shifter to the transmission levers at the side cover. Also, keeping the rod in place while adjusting the TILT of the shifter (towards the dash or towards the front seat) is an added bonus.

Next comes the hack job on the floor pan. The idea is that the shifter needs to be installed on the bracket, then using a punch mark the center of the hole you need to cut so that the shifter arm can be connected through the floor right? WRONG - not with this setup. The clearance is so small that the Syncro Loc could not even be attached to the bracketry.

Great....

What to do? I decided to orient myself from above by drilling two holes. One at the pivot of the shifter (center line of shifter) and one immediately above the second hole on the bracketry (this is where the slot is located on the Syncro Loc). This took forever, but I wanted to be sure I cut out NO MORE THAN WAS NECESSARY to install the shifter. Check out the picture below...



Those are all of my cuts. I started with the large rectangle you see, but each time I kept finding out that something else interfered, one of the stop bolts got in the way, etc. Crazy stuff I know, but I ended up with what I think is the smallest footprint for the shifter going through the floor pan.



more in the next post

[Hot Rod Reverend]

The installation of the shifter took quite some time. Checking clearances, attaching the lever, setting the tilt, etc. But this is what I ended up with concerning the amount of "throw" from the shifter...

First Second


Third Reverse


And Neutral...



So now that I had all of that squared away it was time to install the rods that attach the shifter to the Hurst levers on the pivots on the side cover. The First/Reverse rod installed without too much issue - no problems there. But, check out the interference on the Second/Third gear rod -



So..... out it came and put into the vise to be "modified"



Now we're cooking!



By the time I got done with all of this it was too dark outside and this 55 has no headlights so I could not swap the gears to see how we're doing in that regard. I need to set the stops anyway.

The hole I made for this thing is approximately 5.5" by 4.5" and it is on that weird angle where the shift lever will be oriented far to the right and up the tunnel. Time to go shopping for a shifter boot and plate that would be sizeable.

Glad it's in and I am pleased with the results so far. I did sit down in the seat several times and swapped through the gears to make sure there was no binding, etc. At first I thought the shifter might be too close to the side of the driver but I think I am going to like where it is oriented and the height of the shift lever is near perfect.

[Hot Rod Reverend]

Here is a photo or two of the boot I picked up that will cover the shifter and the hole. It is a whole lot larger than I want it to be, but with the footprint of the shifter mechanism coming up through the floorpan I really have no choice here.



I plan to install Dynamat, or something similar, under the carpet so I guess these small sheet metal screws that came with the boot and chrome retainer are not going to work... should be easy to find a few. I am taking note also that I will have to be very careful not to harm the wiring harness sitting on the trans tunnel when I drill the holes for the boot later on.

Hopefully I can get in the garage tomorrow

[Hot Rod Reverend]

Back in the garage today for a little while, but mostly to work on these...





I rebuild at least one Holley 94 or more each month, some passenger car variety, some of the truck variety (different air horn of course) - but I sell every one I build. I completely go through them, have a very good parts stash, and use an ethanol compliant kit for each one of them. The funds help the project along.

Oh, and I also found one of these to make myself a clock too. Now that my dad has one I thought I would make one too. I already have the clock for the headlight ring.

[Hot Rod Reverend]

I did spend a few minutes removing the shifting shaft on the column. To maintain some sense of appearance I believe I am going to get a tubular steel shaft that is 5/8" ID and 3/4" OD to mount on the column.

http://www.onlinemetals.com/merchant...83&top_cat=197





I measured the post that is under the cup on the top of the column and it is 5/8" OD. It looks like my plan will work and I can just prime and paint one up to match (I need to touch up the column anyway since I boogered it up a little bit when I put it in the first time.

I took a photo of the top of the column and the cup. There is a bearing at the top of the tube. At first I thought it was for the steering shaft but the shaft does not even come close to the diameter of the opening. Am I missing a piece or something? I am going to have to check my diagrams and take a look see. The parts all 56 passenger car pieces, column tube, shaft, steering wheel, etc. One thing I just thought about... is there a spring between the bearing up there and steering wheel?

[frank long island]

as for your dynamat you can get duct insulation at the big box home center and save a lot of money the shifter looks good once the carpet is in you wont notice it I used almost the same size on my wagon when I did the 5 speed only difference mine was on top of the tunnel

[Hot Rod Reverend]

Frank,

Thanks for the tip, I will have to check into that next time I am at my local Lowe's. How thick is the material and how does it deal with the heat?