Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

A Review of the Bidding

Reviewing the bidding

I used to get frustrated when things didn’t go right. That can still be my reaction in the short term but in the long term I have found that failure reveals solutions with a clarity that is impossible to visualize early on.

For example this transmission linkage problem that I’m struggling with. I am sure that anyone that works on such problems regularly would see my efforts and remark to themselves…”This Percy fellow is a real dummie.”
I admit I am not particularly mechanically inclined but the manner in which my mind was programmed at conception does not lend itself readily to mechanical tasks. The irony is that my passions are linked to mechanical tasks and I find myself with a desire to do things I have little talent for.

Still there is enough of a residue…a rivulet in the bottom of the glass and if I coax it hard enough, it will eventually lead me to a solution. This has been the case with the transmission linkage dilemma. At first I had absolutely no clue as to how to install the device. Then Henry, my friend, gave me some very general ideas which offered a very imperfect roadmap to success. In the process of trying to apply his thinking I got closer realizing the shifter had to be installed on the back rather than the side of the transmission. Then I built a bracket to do this and using it to hold the shifter I began to connect the linkage rods. From this point I encountered all manner of difficulties a few of which are listed below.

1. The tabs that need to go on the shafts that go into the transmission and control the internal shifting needed to be bent and offset with each other. Otherwise they bound up when they moved into one another’s plane.

2. The rods needed to have heat applied sparingly and all around when being bent with a torch to keep them from becoming too brittle and breaking off.

3. The rods I had from the scrap yard were the right diameter and threaded but in fine instead of coarse thread. The rod I bought was threaded in coarse thread. I had to rethread them with a die. If you ever rethread coarse into fine you will see that the resulting thread, while it works for my purpose, is not a consistent one.

4 The bracket I made to hold the shifter was anchored forward of the overdrive unit on two confidently bolts that attached the housing. With the bracket they needed longer bolts to compensate for the width of the angle iron.

5. These angle iron brackets held a vertical tab to which the shifter attached. From the bottom of the shifter the rods attached and they bound on the downward plane of the angle iron. They also bound against one another because the scavenged adjustment screws were too big for the application.

6. The alignment hole was covered up and the pin had to be put in place before the shifter was bolted up. There were too attachment points for the bolts and the bottom one was obstructed by the bottom plane of the angle iron.

Such complications are not uncommon when you try and engineer a mechanical solution by the seat of your pants. This is why most who do this sort of work, pick up the telephone, call the manufacturer and have him send the necessary attachment hardware. However, if the automobile is over sixty years and had an optional transmission (Overdrive) finding the required hardware is a challenge.

However with each iteration I get closer to solving the problem and the solutions become simpler and more elegant. What I have learned is that instead of starting with a robust design, start with one that is strong enough to mock up the proposed solution and hold things in place initially. Once you find it works you can reinforce it later. Sort of like the transmission stand I built initially that began as a square box but under load shifted into a parallelogram box. Actually building the stand was a good move on my part. I can sit on my bucket of hydraulic fluid and spin the thing around on castors as I study the problem from all angles. I doubt I would presently be in the same frame of mind if I had been rolling around on a dolly underneath the car.

Anyone observing my struggles with a modicum of mechanical experience and ability would no doubt be shaking their heads at my efforts in absolute disbelief. An unexpected benefit however is that as you go through these machinations and iterations the forces at work on the problem begin to reveal themselves one by one