I'm in the middle of swapping from a C4 automatic to a 4 speed top loader manual transmission. The column thats in the car now is for a automatic with column shift, and the trans i'm installing is a 4 speed manual with a floor shifter. My question is, can the column I have be modified to look and work like a manual column, or do I need to start looking for a true manual shift column? Thanks allot.
You can remove the pin holding on the chrome handle...and that will get you 90% of the way there as far as looks. I have also read where some members then cut off the "bung" that sticks out and then used bondo to fix where the bung was. Otherwise....you can look for a floor shift steering column.
On muscle car(Spike TV) they did an episode showing just that. Cutting off the bug then welding a piece of metal to fill in the gap. Let me see if I can find the video.
you will also need to remove the steering wheel and remove the lock pin that locks the steering wheel and stops the the key from being shut off. Or you will be constantly grabbing the ring where the old shifter was attatched to to push it back gets a lil scary when rolling at a decent speed and you cant turn when you need to. I removed mine by pulling the wheel and just cutting the pin off.
If you wire up the column under the hood where the shifter rod was once located, no real need to pull the steering wheel. Just wire it up so it doesn't move. Otheres have threads on here about doing this.
The funny part is the floor shift columns have a hole in the side of them from the factory..:16suspect
The floor shifts are pretty much the same, manual vs automatic. The three on the tree column is different then the auto on the column too and it has its own problems.
I drove my 74 Grabber for years, it was a column shifted car, that I converted to floor shift. All I did was knock the pin out, and remove the lever, nothing else.
