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The shifter bolt in my 71 LT1 somehow came loose.
It is very tight in the tunnel that the bolt can’t come out completely. But it’s also impossible to get a wrench or tool up there. See picture below.
I removed the driver side exhaust pipe and pulley for the ebrakes for better access. Here are my questions:
- is this bolt threaded or is it a pin or clip keeping it in place?
- what’s the best way to tighten or secure this bolt? From the top by removing the shifter boot from the console? I hope I don’t have to drop the trans.
- what’s the best to keep this bolt from backing out again?
Thanks in advance for your help. Any pictures or video would be big plus.
It's a pain but I'd just remove the shifter assembly. If it came loose it came loose for a reason. How does it shift? If crappy you can rebuild it and make it "like new". You can also set it up for short throw. It's easy and makes shifting a lot quicker. I even think it's mentioned in the owners manual. It's not hard, just moving the linkage ends to different hold in the trans levers. If you do go this route you'll need to make or acquire this alignment tool to hold the shifter to install the rods to the trans levers.
Two comments:
1) I stand corrected on the captive nut, but the steel bar serves the same purpose and shouldn’t strip that easily.
2) I would not assume it is stripped. Once when reinstalling my shifter, I had loosely fastened it while alternating from above and the other shifter bolt that needs to be tightened from below. Fortunately I noted the slight play in the shifter mechanism before reassembling the shifter plate and caught it.
A previous owner may have done the same thing.
Sometimes you have to sacrifice a wrench to get into a tight spot. Bend as necessary.
Or, cut the correct width slot in a piece of flat stock.
Per the locktite, put a few drops on a long rod, screwdriver, etc. that will allow you to reach the bolt. You may not need to get the locktite on the very first thread.
From the top and with the shifter inner/outer boot out I was able to see how the shifter bolt attaches to the support bracket.
On my early 1971 LT1 w/4sp. the nut is welded to the bracket. Somewhere along its 50 year life-span I think the shifter bolt was replaced with a slightly shorter one.
I put in a longer bolt so that it has a better bite to the welded nut.(see pictures). This should stop it from backing out. The locking washer and loctite should also help.
Replacing the bolt was the biggest pain.
Thanks everyone for your advice. Just waiting for new boots to be delivered and should be cruising this weekend.
It gets torqued tight. Don't remember the value. But the shifter should still slide freely after torqueing. Mine didn't. So I had to dissasemble and rebuild. Who knows what previous owners have done to it? I had my OEM Hurst shifter rebuilt by Hurst themselves. Even they did it wrong and it was too tight. Had to redo it and remove the extra shim they had added.
Since you have a lot of threads sticking out, you might think about running another jam nut up those exposed threads to augment that factory piece of threaded strap metal.
Can't hurt.
Shifter bolt coming loose
