While winter keeps a firm grip on the weather, I've been working in the house on a project to see if there is a way I can install a pushbutton TorqueFlite shifter assembly with a single cable to a later model transmission, and give it a close to stock appearance. Using a '64 Valiant shifter as a starting point, I quickly discovered that it's not easy, and undoubtedly someone would have done it long ago if it was.
It's not too difficult to figure out a basic functioning design, but the challenge is making it compact enough to fit behind the dash, rugged enough to take the beating of everyday driving, while trying to make it look like something that could have come from the factory.
Whoever designed the mechanical pushbutton shifter was an engineering genius. It's so complicated in movement, yet so rugged, it's amazing how they have survived more than half a century with so few problems. I only wish that at the time Chrysler would have had an automatic transmission that needed a park feature in the shifter.
At least the weather forecast looks good all next week with highs in the 60s, and 70s. It's about time, as this is the coldest, windiest winter in the eighteen years I've lived in Texas.
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