Garage Projects

The Mighty Merc – Shifting the Mess (Part 2)

After bench building all the linkages, it was time to see if they were going to actually work. But before I could do anything, I had to cut some more out of my beautiful rust free floor. I started by hacking up the cover plate:
Sara L.: Driveline &emdash;

I then cut a giant hole in the floor and patched it back up. Hopefully, this will be the last of that as I’m tired of welding thing, galvanized, metal:
Sara L.: Driveline &emdash;

Things were looking pretty good at this point! I did wind up having to rotate one of the linkage attachment points on the FWD selector of the NP205, otherwise I would have had to cut a much bigger hole. I did a little bit of blacksmithing to get the handles to clear things that I wanted them to clear:
Sara L.: Driveline &emdash;

Cleaned and painted up:
Sara L.: Driveline &emdash;

While I was modifying things, I hacked my old Ranger shifter, and mated it to the shifter that came with the transmission so that it would be orientated correctly:
Sara L.: Driveline &emdash;

So stick the interior (mostly) back together, and things start looking like this:
Sara L.: Driveline &emdash;

I still need to make a boot up for the shifters, and finish the trim around the trans shifter. But for now, this will do.

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