Sideshift Question for Redbeard
 

Hey James, when you put the sideshift tranny in your six, you made the rear linkage bar if I remember correctly? My questions are , did you have to put a bend in the tube and if you bent it, where and how much was the bend? Next is did you use a stock front connector? Since we are putting a six in the race car I will be making a rear shift tube. I already have a piece of 4130 thin wall tube and I have a four cylinder rod from Kenny that I will use for the rear part and I have one of the aircraft sealed joints for the front. If there is no bend I'll get the parts ready now for fit up when the engine goes in next week for a fit test.

I used a bastardized setup, so don't follow mine.

No bend is needed, in fact what you want is to take a standard 4 cylinder rod and take the bend out of it and have a straight rod instead. The bend for the 4cyl gives you clearence for the engine mount bar. This same bend interferes with the heat exchangers/headers on the 6.

Most people just cut the middle out of the 4 cylinder rod and weld in a section of pipe.

Don't just straighten the rod, as this will make it too long.

James

I'm not Redbeard, but I've seen this done on several cars. No bends necessary, stock coupler and end used. The bent piece in the middle was simply cut out and a straight piece welded in.

Actually, I think the bent part might be a tube and not solid. I have heard of some people using the middle straight part from a tail-shift linkage rear shift rod as the straight piece.

Use a jig to make sure everything is lined up correctly when you do your cutting & welding.

--DD

As suggested, I have the piece of tube and plan to add the ends. The exception is at the front I am using one of the sealed aircraft joints to take the little bit of slop away you get from the aluminum joint. We are using a Patrick engine mount which moves everything up out of the way of stuff coming out of the firewall. Thanks guys.

The stock rod _is_ a tube with 2 solid rod parts welded into the tube.

I cut out the section at the rear and the coupler section and then used straight black iron pipe from Home Depot and slipped the rods inside and welded. The only issue is that the rod is slightly smaller in diameter than the standard black iron pipe. You will want to use some sort of wedges to center the rod and keep it straight.

James

Yeah, just take the measurements and keep the length the same. And keep as much of the small diameter rod for the rear as you can. You will need it.

James