Found these when installing short throw shifter

Rancor Keeper

Registered User
I'm installing a B&M short throw shifter this morning & when I pulled off the stock shifter, I found this spring & curved piece of metal sitting inside the shifter housing. They weren't attached to anything, literally sitting on the bottom & I easily removed them. They were in the bottom right corner & I did have trouble shifting into reverse & occasional trouble on the 3-4 shift as well. This makes sense now as that's the location of those two gears so maybe they were interfering with the mechanism when it would go to the lower right.

Any idea what these could be from? The last pic shows the housing as it sits now - nothing looks missing to me. The car was shifting ok (minus the issues noted above) so I don't think they were critical to the transmission operation. I'm just wondering where they came from.

tbird tranny1.jpg
tbird tranny2.JPG
tbird tranny3.jpg
 
trans spring

Upon further review, I believe the spring is the trans spring that's supposed to sit over the cup that holds the shifter ball. Anyone got an image on how this spring should sit?
 
Unfortunately I don't have a pic, but you are correct that the spring is there to help hold the ball part of the shifter in place, although with the B&M shifter, it really isn't necessary. If you want to put it back, if you look at your bottom pic, just to the right of where the bottom of the shifter connects with the linkage for the trans, you will see a small hole. The part of the spring that comes to an end goes into this hole from underneath, and the center of the coils on the spring go over the nub on the back of the shift linkage in the trans, which should position the other end of the spring with the 180 bend on it directly over top of the center of the opening where the shifter ball goes in.

As for the other piece of metal, that is part of your stock shifter that fell apart, so just toss that in the garbage.
 
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... the spring is there to help hold the ball part of the shifter in place, although with the B&M shifter, it really isn't necessary.

After fiddling with it some, I figured out how to reinstall the spring, although your description was spot on & would have saved me 20 minutes if I had been patient & waited for a response. I tried the B&M with & without it - you're correct, it didn't seem to move through the gears any differently.

Thanks for the response; really appreciate it.
 
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