Flash's 1965 Ford Thames

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and more :

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Assembled it all and ...... ........... another fail.

Waaayyy to much movement at the business end of the gear stick. Selecting gears felt a bit like stirring porridge and I'd be likely to poke my passenger in all kinds of intimate places whilst trying to select gears.

So, after sending the well butchered Express mechanism to the naughty corner to let it think about what it had done wrong, I moved on to my next plan of attack, which involves this crusty looking bit of kit that I sourced from my local wrecker for the princely sum of $20.

[Flash]

For the next version of my floor mounted gearshift I'm going to use the shifter out of a mid '90s Toyota Tarago that I sourced from my local wreckers.

The good thing about this shifter is that the linkages work in the direction that will provide me with a standard shift pattern using a shorter set of Morse cables.

So the first thing that I did was to throw my cables on the loose shifter using some temporary clamps and other bits and bobs to fix the outers in the correct positions. With the other ends of the cables attached to the gearbox - again using temporary holding brackets for the outers - I proceeded to put the new shifter through its paces. 

Despite it looking a bit like a dog's breakfast the first test results were pretty positive with the gear stick consistently returning to the centre gate when dropped back into neutral.

So far so good.

[Flash]

In the Tarago the gear stick mechanism sits inside the van and is covered by a plastic console.

My plan for the Thames is to hide the mechanism underneath the floor with just the gear stick poking through and surrounded by a rubber gaiter. In this way I'm hoping to to keep the cabin looking as "old school" as possible.

Sounds easy enough, but the floor space available is pretty limited and ii is not without its own set of challenges.

The only available real estate is the area circled in yellow:

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The eagle eyed amongst you would have noticed that the front wall of the engine box rises from the ventilation flap at an angle. The reason for this is that looking from underneath the van it creates a little tunnel that funnels cold air from the front grill to the radiator that is mounted in the engine box forward of the engine itself.

So in essence I've got a little triangle of space that measures about 250 mm long by 350 mm wide. 

View from underneath with centre point marked up in tape.

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The first challenge is that there isn't enough space to mount the shifter complete with cables as the cables clash with the radiator core.

Gave it a bit of thought and decided to try angling the cable holding section downwards to allow the cable to clear the radiator.

Quick cut and bend to prove the concept.

Looks nasty and its flimsy as hell. Chucked the cables back on and put it through the gears and it still works smoothly.

So far so good.

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Okay, so on to making the mechanism a bit more robust.

A bit of metal carving and a few tack welds and I'll let the photos tell the story.

Still looks a bit nasty and I cocked up one of the holder brackets the first time around, but I'll trim that off when I tidy the whole thing up.

For now I just want to prove the functionality.

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Chucked everything back together and crawled under the van to check clearances. 

All looking good.

Made up and mounted some permanent outer holders for the gearbox side - my 3rd or 4th set to date as I'm using existing chassis holes because ... OCD.

Gave it all another test and I'm happy to report that I'm getting consistent results. Got Mrs Flash to give it a go too and she is a very happy lady.

Happy wife, happy life, so its on to the next step.

[Flash]

Even although I'm 100% happy with the shift operation, I still need to work out how I'm going to mount the bloody thing.

My OCD tendencies will not allow for any fixings visible from inside the van and there is also no way I'm cutting a ruddy great hole in the Thames, until I've got the mounting sorted.

So in my first step towards finalising this I proceeded to make a wooden mock up of the tunnel wall complete with replicated wall angle .... yep its a sad, sad life I lead.

I've just clamped the shifter base to the inside face of the slope for now, but my plan is to drop the back so that the cables will face downwards and that should bring the gear stick back to as close as possible to vertical as currently indicated by my rusty old flat bar, but that is for another day.

I'll need to extend the gear stick anyway so it should be easy enough to incorporate a bit of a bend if needed

I admire your staying power if you've managed to reach this point in my story without falling asleep.

Till next time. 

[Flash]

Over the past few days I've been giving some thought to how I'm going to mount the gear shift mechanism under the floor without any visible fixings from inside the cab.

Then in the wee hours of this morning I had a eureka moment.

Running up underneath the angled front wall of the engine box is a second steel plate that looks like so:

[Flash]

The purpose of this plate is to deflect a stream of incoming cool air over the top of the radiator. This air gets blown into the hollow void that exists between the inner and outer skin of the engine box lid.

Back in the day when heat reducing materials were pretty poor quality, the propeller heads at the Dagenham Ford factory came up with this brilliant idea to use cold air drawn in through the front grill to keep the engine box lid cooler to the touch. Those who have driven a Thames in warmer climates will attest to the fact that the plan didn't work all that well.

Anyhoo, since the plate is still there on my van and I have a plan to fill the void in the engine lid with heat resistant expanding foam to keep temperatures down, I figured I could re purpose this plate and use it as a mount for my floor shifter.

Photo of the plate in situ:

  

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Thought I'd start the process of converting the plate, by creating a mock up in wood.

This will allow me to have a few goes at getting the position of the mechanism exactly right before I start hacking up the real deal.

So, this morning I put together a MK1 version.

The angle of the base plate is pretty good and the cables now point downwards in order to clear the radiator core. The angle of the gear stick will need to change and also the gear stick has ended up further up the tunnel wall than I would like.

All good learnings so tomorrow I'll crack into the MK2 version.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Flash]

Spent this morning working on the MK2 version of my gear shift mock up and I'm much happier with the proposed position of the gear stick.

I then disassembled the shifter one more time, drilled the first of the mounting holes in the intermediate tunnel panel and bolted the panel in for a quick test fit.

The good news is that it clears my accelerator mechanism and the gear change cables look like they will clear the radiator.

So now I need to take a courage pill and start cutting up my intermediate tunnel panel.

 

 

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Took a courage pill, sat quietly in a corner until the effects kicked in, then traced my MK2 template onto the plate and quickly poked a hole in it with my baby grinder of angles.

Bolted everything back together and gave it a quick dry run.

Looking good, but the gate lever pokes well above everything, so I will likely need to lower the mechanism a bit more in order to clear the cabin floor. 

Next step is to bolt the intermediate plate up under my wooden tunnel mock up to fine tune the height clearance before I fabricate the rear mounting brackets for the mechanism base plate.

 

[Flash]

Spent a few hours this morning building another replica of the air tunnel / engine box front panel.

Started off by making a cardboard template of the side profile which I then replicated in some old chipboard that I had lying around.

Got the position of the intermediate plate's mounting bolts pretty spot on so I was able to bolt in the intermediate plate complete with attached shifter.

As I suspected I'm going to need to lower the shifter base a bit more so that my "gate" lever will clear the tunnel top, so that's what I'll tackle next.

 

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Spent another fruitful few hours on my floor shift conversion again today.

Managed to fabricate the last two mounting brackets, then bolted the mechanism into my mock up tunnel. I've still got a few spacers to fabricate but its fine as is for testing purposes.

Chucked the other end of the morse cables onto the HiAce gearbox for a further check.

Put the shifter through its paces and I'm very happy with how its turning out.

It's becoming a busy little space inside the tunnel.

 

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I was planning to weld a little "ear" onto the gear stick to hold the "gear" cable, but then realised that I'm going to need to keep the "ear" removable if I'm wanting to be able to strip the mechanism down for maintenance purposes in the future.

So I ended up carving a little "ear" that bolts up to two existing mounting points on the Tarago gear stick. Bolted it together once again for a test. Success !

With the mechanism now largely completed, I cut a piece of ply and attached it to the top of my mock up tunnel to represent the actual Thames floor.

I've kept the opening oversize for now.

Tomorrow I'll make a little filler panel based on the final gear stick movement and I can then determine the size of the rubber gaiter that I will need to cover things up.

Thanks for looking.

 

[Flash]

According to the Captain's Log today is day 374 on the Thames. Time sure does fly when fun is being had.

I'm hoping that some of you can relate to the update I'm about to share.

Sometimes it's the simplest tasks that take the most time and I would never have guessed that it would take me three mornings in the shed to fabricate 4 little brackets for the tunnel plate that I am mounting the floor shift to. Let me explain:

So as I've mentioned before the plate was originally designed as a wind deflector that channeled cold air from the front grill to cool the engine box lid. As a result the original 4 little mounting tabs tack welded to the plate by the good fellows at Dagenham would never be up to the task of handling ongoing force from repetitive gear changes, so I decided meatier mounts were required.

I started off by cutting and bending some brackets out of 2 mm steel that I welded to the plate. All looked good when I test fitted it to my mock up tunnel, but when I came to mount the plate in the Thames tunnel there was an instant fail. Due to the funnel like shape of the tunnel, the only way that I was going to get the plate in position was by removing the radiator and sliding the plate forwards. Although this is achievable now, there is no way that a lazy sod like myself is going to remove the radiator every time I want to take out the gearshift for future maintenance, so I ended up cutting off my newly welded brackets and made up a "bolt in" set. 

Took forever to do as I could only tackle one bracket at a time.

Undo the plate....  cut off one bracket ....  bend up a new bracket .......  poke some holes in it ...... clamp it in place .....  poke some mounting holes in the plate ....  test fit it into my mock up tunnel using the remaining 3 welded brackets and the new bolt on bracket ...... poke another hole to line up with the original Thames bolt hole in the tunnel wall ....... confirm everything lines up correctly.

Repeat above process 3 more times.

Mind numbing to say the least, but I'm happy to announce that the 4 brackets are done and dusted.

Tomorrow I'll crawl under the Thames and bolt the whole lot together in its forever home. With a bit of luck all goes well.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for the next exciting episode.

[Flash]

It's just before 9 am and already a hot and sticky day here at Rough & Ready Restos in sunny old Queensland. Just perfect weather for grovelling around under the Thames.

Thought I'd start the day off by test fitting the intermediate tunnel plate with its newly fabricated mounting brackets. Up to now all work has been done using the wooden mock up tunnel, so I was pleasantly surprised when all the holes lined up and everything bolted in perfectly.

I failed to mention in yesterday's update that whilst still in the mock up phase I had raised the plate by a good few inches taking it closer to the actual Thames floor. I did this to reduce the gear stick throw and thus in turn reduce the size of the hole that I need to poke in the Thames floor. I'm still using the factory original bolt holes for the intermediate plate so the L brackets needed to be made a lot longer to accommodate the plate shift.

The below photos give a general idea of what is actually going on now that the mounting plate is fitted.

Next step is for me to put on my big boy pants and poke a great big hole in the Thames floor.

[Flash]

Quickly stripped down the gearshift mechanism and bolted the base plate in position to verify that my Morse cables are definitely going to clear the radiator. Yep, looks okay. For peace of mind I'll fabricate a bracket to hold the cables permanently away from the radiator core.

No more excuses now Flash, so time to take a cement pill and poke that hole in the floor !

Before you run off to Specsavers I'd just like to apologise for the quality of the pics.