What do you do with a roached out shifter

[Alfred Lord Tenniscourt]

I just finisher rebuilding a NP435. I think the bottom end of the trans is going to work just fine. I used a kit from Novak, and all the stuff they sent seemed top of the line. Also, their instructions were pretty good. However, the shifter is all roached out! Pretty much everything that touches the bottom of the shift stick is totally jacked up - and by that I mean it looks like it was built on Monday or Friday, and then abused for forty years.
I took my dremel, and tried to true up some of the surfaces as much as I could. I took a lot of burrs out and re-shaped some of the surfaces so that the shifter stick will pushe them and move the gears instead of poping off of them constantly and jaming up... The stuff needs to be replaced right soon though.
Does anyone know of a supplier for these parts?
By the way, I figured out a way to pull the race for the input shaft out of the input shaft retainer with only a gear puller and a piece of scrap metal (no machining required) if anyone is interested...

[fmartin_gila1]

In a pinch, I have built parts up by welding, then shaping down to size by grinding and filing. Your best chance is to find a top cover with the shifter shafts and forks in better shape than what you have. Junkyard time.
Fred

[390Nut]

Try calling Novak directly, and asking for shifter parts, they just might have them.

I called them inquiring about the shifter locating pin (small rolled steel pin about a half inch long by 3/16th's inch diameter) for my T18, because I had gone through about a half dozen home made ones over the years, and most used ones are pretty worn out.

They had them in stock, and I ordered 5 of them over the phone. Cost me about $12.00 and I had them within a few days. They also had shifter parts as well, if I remember correctly, including the shifter handle itself, for the T18, so they may also have such parts for the NP435.

Your other alternative is parts scrounging at wrecking yards or parts trucks.

[Alfred Lord Tenniscourt]

I just put Novak in my cell phone (877 602 1500 in case anyone needs it) so I can bother them when I am on break at work. I bet they have them, and I have had really good luck with Novak in the past.

However...

I was thinking about welding and re-grinding the parts, but I don't know what I am doing and I don't want to spend a day making junk. Everything looks like cast iron (or at least something with a really high carbon content), and I don't have any experience welding cast. It also looks like the parts have been case hardened so that they have a hard wear surface.

Can I stick or torch weld on this stuff without cracking it and leaving myself shiftless (this is a triple pun as I will be doing shift work this week and will not be able to get there without the truck)? Will my new stuff last for a while if I weld it up myself? Do you guys have any tricks or tips before I start with this grizzly buisness?

By the way, manual transmissions are really cool, and this has been a fun project. I was pretty sick of it about the fourth time I had to pull the mainshaft because I had forgotten things, but I can see light at the end of the tunnel at this point, and it is a project that is totally giving me that warm, fuzzy feeling one gets when one replaces chaos with order in the context of an ancient picki-up truck.

[averagef250]

You don't need any sort of puller whatsoever to get the bearing race out of the front retainer. Just lay down a real hot weld bead inside the race. Be sure to use anti-spatter spray. It'll fall right out 30 seconds after you finish the weld. The rear cluster bearing is the same way only use a torch on the aluminum housing for a few seconds and it'll fall right out.

I don't follow with what you need to fix in the shift plate. Are the shift rails worn or the top plate itself or the shifter?

Honestly, 80%+ of NP435 top plates are in real good shape. If yours has any issues throw it away and get a used one for $20 from a wrecker.

I believe you can buy them new, but you're going to get just the top plate, no rails, no forks, etc. You'll have several hundred in the top plate. Just buy a good used one and be done with it.

[390Nut]

If its one small part bad and you want new, buy it. Other wise I'ld hit the wrecking yards and find one that feels good through the shift pattern.

[fordman]

have you tired roach powder? i am laughing so hard i cant stop coughing

[Alfred Lord Tenniscourt]

Novak doesn't have the parts I need, so I guess it is off to the bone yard...

The parts that are worn are the pieces that the shift stick actually engages. They are made of cast iron, and are atatched to the rails with roll pins. The third/fourth gear piece that is worn out is also the third/fourth shift fork. The first/second and reverse parts are mounted on the same rail as the corresponding shift forks, but are further forward so they sit right under the stick.

I threw the thing together to see how it would work, and it is better than it was. But I still can't let my momma borrow the truck, which was kind of my goal. I am actually pretty pleased that I took a transmission apart untill there were no two pieces left together and put it back together, and that it works even a little better than it did. But still, I want it to work right.

I have a feeling that the bad synchro's, etc. were the real cause of the problem, and that is fixed now. But, there was excessive wear on the shifter which was caused by having to force it into gear all the time which wore the shifter out, and now I have to deal with that problem bacause the previous owner didn't fix the initial problem.

My PO was kind of a POS.

Has anyone actually welded any of this stuff? It is the same material as the shift forks which looks like a very high carbon steel to me, and I am afraid that if I try to weld it it will crack unless I have a way to heat it in a very controled way, and I can't think of a way to do that which I feel would be good enough.

It is kind of strange too, ecept for those three parts that are worn out everything is in great shape. The shift rails look new, likewise all of the ball bearings for the detents and the egg shaped pieces that keep the transmission from trying to engage two gears at once. Even the nylon pices on the end of the shift forks looked ok.

Anyone got any tips on finding a similar trans in the boneyard with a shifter that will work?

[Alfred Lord Tenniscourt]

I know exactly what you mean about Novak, but I didn't pay them for what they had, I payed them for what they knew...
If I knew about a good transmission shop around here I wold certainly use them, but I don't. As a matter of fact, I don't even know of a good independent gas station any more, and I just found out that they are going to sell the last good, independent auto parts store in the next few months. It is not a good time to want to fiddle with an old truck in North West Indiana...
I am kind of mad at Novak anyhow, I asked them about the parts and the guy told me they didn't have them and that I could try a junk yard. Now I don't mind being talked down to a little bit, because a lot of people know more than I do about this stuff, but I am not so dumb that I don't know what a junk yard is. That, and if I wanted to dig around through 40 year old trucks looking for slightly less worn out junk than what I have all day I would have done that in the first place...

Does anyone know what the parts I am looking at are actually called? It would be a huge help if I didn't have to explain what they are every time I call someone...

[averagef250]

I know what you're talking about, but don't know what they're called either!

One thing to realize is transmission parts houses deal with people who don't know what things are called all the time, they're used to it. Most parts in a transmission have 5 names that all mean the same thing anyway.

I'd just say the cast pieces on the shift rails that the shift stub engages.

[Alfred Lord Tenniscourt]

I decided to go with the weld and re-machine option as I thought it was probably the safest bet, so I picked up some welding rod the other night from the welding supply. I explained to the old guy there what I was doing, and that I wanted something good and hard so that it wouldn't wear out quickly. He said he had what I needed and pulled a box of welding rod out of the corner which I paid for and took with me.
Later, I pulled the parts, cleaned them up, and tried to stick weld them. This did not work so well. The arc welder I have is not too great, and I could not find a setting that would hold an arc that was still low enough not to chew a huge hole in the base metal ahead of the bead. So, I ground down what I had and got out the torch and hammered the coating off of a couple of welding rods...
Using the torch worked pretty well, and I built up plenty of extra metal so that I would be sure to get a nice clean part after I filed her down. I cooled all the newly welded parts off in the sink, and ground them down on the bench grinder as far as I could without being worried about getting too far into the parts. Then I got out the file and started to cut them down to their final dimensions. Within about thirty seconds my file was worthless and I still had a lot of metal to remove. I figured the file had been close to worthless before I had started and grabbed my finer file that I was planning on using to make the last few passes with. It lasted another couple of seconds before it was worthless too. So I went to the hardware store and bought two new files thinking that my old ones were just dull to begin with. They actually didn't last as long as my old ones had.
By this time things were down to the wire and I had to throw my stuff back together to get to work in the morning. So now my problem is the exact opposite of the one I had when I started, instead of being too sloppy, my shifter is now too tight, and I can barely get through my gears bacause it binds so badly. I plan on getting another four files and going back to work this weekend untill I get it right...
I don't know what that old guy at the welding supply sold me, but it should last a while...

[fordman]

whats the number on the rod he sold you? they should have a number printed on them.

[averagef250]

I hope this all works out for you.

Sure seams like a roundabout way to end up with a repaired top plate that's not as good as one from a wrecker that would cost the same as buying 2 new files.

Shift rails don't wear out. Yours wore out from abuse and poor maintenance. A 435 will literally last indefinitely if it's treated decent and has it's fluid changed every now and then. It takes a lot of work to wear one of these out, decades of abuse and neglect.

[Wes]

If a hard rod was used and cooled in liquid, increasing hardness, a file is not going to cut it. A stone will, maybe tungsten carbide cutting tool

Not sure if jeep t-18 are same or not but saw this earlier today
http://s59.photobucket.com/albums/g305/ ... /?start=80
All that stuff is for sale

[willowbilly3]

have you tired roach powder? i am laughing so hard i cant stop coughing

I was thinking maybe a roach clip.
Seriously, are you talking about the sliders and the shifter, not the forks?
Rebuild kits are one thing but when you start buying hard parts for a stickshift you can spend a lot of money very quickly. Find a used one.