[cortcomp]

You can use any hydraulic bearing you use with a muncie, etc. I tried the RAM one but i always had trouble with leaking and over extending, even though i measured 800 times, and it had the snap ring on it to prevent over extension. It was a very hard pedal too, and i picked the bore master cylinder that ram recommended. Maybe my pedal ratio was off? I'd rather use a slave cylinder against a fork setup, but i used my first NP440 in a pontiac (turned down the bearing retainer) so there is no BOP hydraulic factory setup to borrow parts from. The stock linkage ended up being the ticket.

You can see the original linkage i did for my 71 on this trans above. It looks like it will move my shifter forward and to the passenger side some vs the current rigged 3 spd setup. I will likely go the same route.

I basically used muncie shift ears on the tranny, and hurst mount plate (wallowed out one of the holes to line up on the NP440) and a competition plus shifter for the car. It shouldn't be near the bench seat, so you could use that handle, or another one if you wanted to swap them. I will likely use the A-body gm competition plus again and maybe a truck shifter handle if it is too low.

For the linkage, it's bent weird to clear the crossmember, and the speedo cable, and it's hard to tell, but it has to come out and forward to clear the wide body of the tranny, not just forward to the ears. It could likely be straighter under the truck without the tighter tunnel that my pontiac has.

I used B7 alloy fine thread rod from grainger because it's stronger than normal all thread, and it's fine thread and almost all heim joints are fine thread. Summit had cheap joints. You just have to use small headed bolts on the shifter ears because, with the width of the heims joints and the bolt heads, they could touch. Locktite on all the nuts. You bend the rod as needed on the bench with a jack handle, and screw nuts on it, then cut it, and screw the nuts off of the cut to keep the threads clean.

You could just make rods with just about anything if you want the stock style non-heim linkage, but i had poor luck with that. While this is very bulky looking, there is ZERO play, should last forever, very sturdy and ZERO shifter slop.

On the shifter end, you could use probably plain rod ends instead of heim joints, as they really don't need to swivel. The linkage is so stiff, i'd still use heim joints on the shift ear ends, as when they move and the geometry changes, the swiveling of the ball in the joint keeps it from binding as the original alignment is slightly different. The heim joints just act as really nice error corrector in the linkage, as you're moving in 3 dimensions with this linkage and the shifter mounted to the tailshaft.

Near as i can tell, the original truck shifter was like 4 inches from the tailshaft, and you shifted with straight rods, they wouldn't have a binding issue without swivel joints because they're only moving in 2 dimensions.

The integrated reverse switch is nice, as the column doesn't move when you shift anymore (on my 71 the column moves because of backdrive linkage, from the factory, but i was missing the reverse switch and wiring on the column, so when i re-wired the car, the reverse switch in the tranny came in handy) Summit has the weatherpak connectors used on the reverse light switch so you can wire right into it with no splices.