Tinkered with it last night, I gotta say that messing with the tranny for so long killed the motivation levels a bit. I wasn't sure what I would need to do to the tranny crossmember to get it bolted back up and all it needed was opening the holes on the frame attachment side. Easy!
The shifter was a bit of a reach into 3rd and 5th was way out there so I cut a couple slices at the base of the lever and pulled it over to close the slices. Worked well and is much much better!
1st gear
5th gear. It's about where 3rd used to be, can't get much better than that!
Here you can see the bend that I put in it
And just because the chrome looked out of place, I painted it black. It should look way better now!
Here's a shot of what the bed will look like. I painted the strips and the hardware body color with a semi-gloss sealer on the oak. It's going to look great.
