I see in most photos of other guy's trucks that their T18 shifting levers are bent differently from mine. I've also noticed this on several trucks I've seen in person.
Any idea why my T18 shifting lever looks like this (instead of being more straight)? Is it because my T18 was taken from a truck that had A/C (and needed clearance under the dash)?
unclejtl wrote:It does seem to be bent up. maybe the PO did that so his extra large girlfriend could sit next to him
'Morning Jason, yeah that could be it!
I'd be a little surprised if the owner bent it himself, since it looks pretty hard to bend. Then again, when I bought the truck it had an old Chevy seat adapted in to it with funky wooden blocks, and maybe it was bent to provide clearance for that.
Does anybody else have a shifter with three bends?
Good morning Spartman, wow that's very interesting! I've confirmed that the side of my transmission says T18 on it, but I suppose it's possible that my shifter came from a T19 too--I have no idea why somebody would do this though.
Maybe if we collect enough data points we can get to the bottom of this mystery.
I think i read on the novak site when you buy a new shifter it comes unbent. I think you can bend to your preference. Heat and bend, probobly a good ideal to remove it from the tranny to do that.
Jump in here guys if im wrong!
Sticks are easy to bend. Just heat it with a torch mostly on the side of the bend that will be stretching. It will bend like butter. If you heat on the compression side you'll get a bulge where the excess metal pushes out.
You can do the reverse as well. When I install a ZF, NV4500 or M5R2 into an old truck I like to use an old 435 stick for looks, but because the new trannies have such a short throw there's no need for the bends anymore. I just use soft jaws in the vice with some careful heat and you can pretty easily make the stick perfectly straight again.
Robroy, like Spartman said, I think you have a later (73-80's) stick in your truck. The bumpside ones don't usually look like that.
