In reply to GTXVette :
Here’s the clincher, it was originally a 700r4 truck not a 400.
My gut tells me that with enough fiddling I should be able to adjust the column mounted shifter to get all gears accurately.
When I first installed the trans I did check to make sure all gears could be selected with the same effort.
understood, Or At least that's what i thought, the 700 that is, So obviously not 4 gears but now 3 . There is probably a little diff in length's and Where it is positioned inside isn't quite where the new patttern fits on the Indcater so you can't Go by that. So who out there has an old 400/350 Floor shifter that he can get, Cheap I Will Look tommorow in my stuff but They are Cable and can be mounted about anywhere like where a 4wd selector mounts on the floor. Where's Curtis He Knows these tricks too
Check Craigs list or Market place(fb)for a used one or your draggin buddy.
also being cable operated I think they don't care how many gears there are you just change the piece of plastic with the indicater Letters/numbers i think, Not so budget frendly when new though, make a post in parts for sale here . Bet Patrick or the Nelson's. have one laying around
Where you live. Stampie also may have one.
I have a couple of Challenge quality ones. Meaning they need to soak in vinegar to free them up then use found on the side of the road bicycle brake cables to hook them up. Glad the modulator worked for you.
I have a hurst ratchet shifter I could install, but I’d rather keep the column shift if I could.
kind of ruins the sleeper vibe of the truck when you look in and see the shifter.
I don’t care if the indicator in the dash is wrong.
Also, thanks for the generous offers but I’m way up in canukistan.
The different GM transmissions had different size bellcranks on the column to match up with the bellcrank size on the trans. I had a heck of a time getting it right when I switched my El Camino from a 200M to a TH350.
The black stuff in the pan is normal. That is just spent clutch material. Think of it like the brake dust on your wheels.
Kickdown solenoid won't affect upshifts, just downshifts. Many throttles have a rotary switch at or near the accelerator that looks like some fancy potentiometer, but in reality it's just a switch.
Testing the radiator is pretty easy. Just pull the trans lines off the radiator and then use a cheap pressure tester. If you get coolant out of the lower fitting you know.
Full fluid swap is in order. If it has been sitting that long, condensation could be rampant. Hate to say it, but you really need to pull the TC and drain as much as you can out of it as well.
400s sometimes whine even when they're working fine. The pumps tend to get noisy. A little whine is OK... usually if it whines in neutral but goes away in gear, you should be fine.
In reply to Curtis :
Thanks for the additional info.
I did drain the converter and refill before install...as much as I could. The fresh fluid did help immensely.
If I understand correctly I should be looking for a truck with a factory th400 and liberate the shifter parts from the column?
Or should I take the whole linkage?
ALWAYS ALWAYS Take Everything you can get Off the Donor when doing these sort of swaps,
Then you have all of it.
GTXVette said:ALWAYS ALWAYS Take Everything you can get Off the Donor when doing these sort of swaps,
Then you have all of it.
I think that is great advice. But I didn’t have a donor.
My wife is away tomorrow night so I get to spend the night wrenching on the truck. Will update when all gears are found.
It depends on the swap. In my case (THM200 to TH350) the bellcrank on the column was too long. (or the bellcrank on the trans was too short) It meant that shifting from P to 1 was only about 2" of travel and the indicator showed R in park and D in first. I redrilled my column bellcrank closer to the column and got close enough to make me happy. It made a bind and I really had to yank to get first, but it was a beater El Camino that I didn't really care about.
Metric columns can be a bitch to disassemble for just a few parts. I would think it's easier to extend or shorten a bellcrank to get the right ratio than it is to tear apart both columns... which may require modification anyway to get the shifter parts to fit. You can usually get lucky and they are a direct swap, but sometimes they just don't fit.
If you want to do the swap, stick with trucks. They are about the only vehicle that got either the 700 or the 400 and there is a greater chance that the bellcranks will just bolt on without issue. In many worlds you could source from G-bodies since they got all possible transmissions, but the one they left out of the mix was the TH400.
Well I messed with the linkage for hours and eventually I had to make a decision.
I’m not please with what I’ve done and I’m sure that the linkage could be made to work given enough time and tinkering.
You realize of course that you now need to put a reverse manual valve body in there.
Ratchet shifter + valve body was the best thing I ever did to my C6. It was admittedly not the best thing I did to my U-joints, but insta-banging through the gears has permanently spoiled me and now I think all flappy-paddle automatics are annoyingly slow to shift, and H gate manuals are just too damned slow and fiddly.
Knurled. said:You realize of course that you now need to put a reverse manual valve body in there.
Ratchet shifter + valve body was the best thing I ever did to my C6. It was admittedly not the best thing I did to my U-joints, but insta-banging through the gears has permanently spoiled me and now I think all flappy-paddle automatics are annoyingly slow to shift, and H gate manuals are just too damned slow and fiddly.
A shift kit in on the next thing “to buy” list. As the transmission still seems to shift gears more based on when it wants than what gear I have selected.
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