Rennshift Shifter Problem Fitting to 302 car with Heater

[luke-44]

I am running into a glitch trying to fit a Rennshift shifter. The instructions say to put the rod bushing bracket under the tunnel and have the Rennshift plate with the aluminum spacer bolt to it.

The problem is the bottom of the bushing binds on the heater cable tubes, causing it to sit at a bad angle. In short, it won't go together. See pix below. Anyone run into this before? The heater cable tubes are welded in place. Before I go chopping stuff up and trying to move them over in the tunnel, I wanted to see if there is another way. Surely I'm not the first person to put this setup in a heater cabled early car. All comments welcome. Thanks in advance,

Here is the rod bushing bracket as it normally sits:




Here is the rod bushing bracket sitting under the tunnel per the Jwest instructions. The bottom of the bracket is tight against the heater cable tubes.

[edmayo]

I personally don't care for aftermarket shifters and that is one of the reasons, the other is the increased effort to move the shifter. That said I think you can space up the entire shifter housing to allow room for the longer pivot arm of the lever without forcing the bushing housing down onto the cable housings. Of course I'd love to hear what Mr. Rennshift suggests!

[luke-44]

I played around a bit more. I guess this is the fix. I sure wish the instructions were a bit more clear. But there is another problem. Long story short, first picture below is how the plate looks if you snug it up tight.



But, if you loosen off the longer 6 mm bolts supplied by Jwest, it will lay down. But there is still a significant gap.



So, I guess you are supposed to use spacers under the plate and tighten it all down? There is no reference to any of this in the JW install instructions. And it just doesn't seem right for such a supposedly well engineered piece. Surprised the washers needed under the plate aren't included. I guess I now know why there are no photos of an original rubber mat car on the JW website. I'm also concluding this is more a racing part than an upgrade for a stock street car.



But assuming all this is correct, there is still one more problem - the carpet. Or I should say rubber mat. I'm sure not going to cut up my original mat. Does anyone know where I can buy this center piece only or does any one have an old used one? Or am I looking at having to make up something? I really don't want to buy an entire carpet kit.

[Haasman]

It seems this is more of a LWB car application. When I worked on the 73 it had a variation of this type of shifter, and it also had stacked washers. I went back to the factory short-shifter after too much time messing with it.

BTW, my SWB car is 302580.

[skinnerd]

On my 73 915, the fork (which is pointed out with the red arrow) has offset holes, such that it
can be installed upside down and possibly cause the binding that you are experiencing.
Not sure if it is the same with your setup or not.

[Anatol]

Fitting the Rennshift shifter to my 68 911S SWB was no problem at all and it made shifting one of the most lovely features of the car!

I cannot recommend them strongly enough.

[luke-44]

Well, I'm up and running - installed as shown above, and shifting just fine. I have ordered some bulk rubber sheet to make up a new rubber center mat as the final step, being as I can't find anybody selling a repro. By the way for the record, here is the reply from JWest. This mirrors exactly what I did, so we're all on the same page:

"In LWB cars the heater levers are at the handbrake, so the tubes are nowhere near the shifter. We have not had very many installations in SWB cars retaining the heater lever, but I have not had this issue. I do understand it, though, the early cars are highly variable as to the placement of parts and your tubes are higher than I have seen before. Sorry, you found a one-in-a-thousand issue. The quickest solution would be to space the shifter up off the floor. Try placing washers under the plate at the bolt locations and tighten it down. Let me know if this works."