Install - Part III
After making the first few cuts, I later decided that the opening needed to be enclosed better, I did some more trimming and immediately remembered what people had told me.
"Your gonna have to chop and hack out the side of that tunnel to get it all to fit". Yeah OK...you told me so.
Now, let me preface this next section by first telling you I'm not an experienced welder. On top of that, I broke my mask and was pretty sure there was little to no mig gas left in my bottle. Now...my metal forming skills aren't too bad so I figured it'd be best to cut the opening clean and remove the hinged panel. My plan was to then mount the shifter body and see what would be needed to enclose the body with a sheet metal box, and do so while not making it too big so that it impedes the travel of the bucket seat.
I figured if I could enclose it with a decent box, I could provide enough of a top that a customized boot could be fabbed on a smaller base, and that way I'd have a smaller upright boot to wrap around the shifter. I ended up fabbing some thin sheet metal to close in 3 sides and encase the shifter body. I then got ready to stab it with blind welds since I had no mask. Yup...the tank was also running empty so in addition to a few holes being burned through on the thin 24ga metal, there were a few less than ideal welds on my part (lol). Being persistent, I got some decent spot welds to penetrate everything nicely and it was enough to hold it all together. I got it to fit the body of the shifter and then moved onto the shift rods which would need slotted.
Here is an end piece I hammered and dollied out of 24ga metal to form it up along the side of the tunnel.
I did the same for the left side and then cut a filler piece to weld between the two sides. All in all, I was happy with it.
The issue with the box was the interference with the shift stop bolts on the case. It means all adjustments will have to be done on mock-up before the transmission is installed.
Here is the box after it was primed with the front cover already roughed together for the shift rod slotting.