TekHousE
Well-Known Member
I wanted to put a Hurst Pro-Matic 2 into my factory console.
I had seen this done a few years back online, some guy had done it to his car. I started hunting for that build topic and found it at DodgeCharger forum. The guy who posted it was 'Keepat', he is on here too so HI mate!
There were a few photos, not overly descriptive, but I PM'd Keepat and he told me he had sold the car a while back. But he was able to provide me enough clues from his memory of doing the job himself, so I really appreciated the pointers in the right direction.
OK, so the plan was to install the Hurst into the stock console position, retaining ALL the stock look, and the stock console shifter surrounds etc. Including having it still light up etc. Of course I knew that with the Hurst being a ratchet bang shifter, the PRND21 would no longer line up since the Hurst simply does not work that way. (it returns to a roughly mid position for those that have never used one) But I would then gain a drag racing sanctioned shifter and by default, a lockout on reverse! Pretty huge oversight from Mopar if you ask me. And a problem that all of the cars from this era had no matter what make. How no lockout on reverse was seen as a good thing is beyond me.
So last weekend we got this done. Me and Janne my mate, and the guy who helped me screw together my rebuilt 383 last winter, and owner of JM Garage here in Finland, rolled up our sleeves and went to work! (Note! He ONLY accepts work on US cars..no exceptions..Great guy!)
I am sorry I did not start taking photos earlier. I really should have, there is a CRITICAL photo missing. But I will try and explain.
This first photo shows the Hurst sitting in place, without my console in place. What is missing here? Anyone that has done this or who has worked on the factory shifter knows that there is an entire bracket missing now..This is the FACTORY bracket that the shifter needs in order to be installed in the car. This bracket is SPOT WELDED to the trans tunnel. We CUT mine off! (it is 100% necessary to remove it in order to do this conversion!) We cut it with a wheel at the forward welded portion, then tried our luck gently lifting the entire bracket up seeing if we could break away (neatly) the rear spot welds. We got lucky and the entire rear just came away..Must have been 2 very crap welds from the factory worker that day my car was made! The result was a bracket that is perfectly able to be welded back if I ever want to go back to 100% factory! If you try this conversion please take care with that bracket. I am not sure how easily they are available, but why ruin it if you don't need to.
The next part of the process is to make sure the Hurst is sitting straight up when it is bolted down. There is a base bracket the Hurst has that has holes in it, you use these to bolt the shifter down to the trans tunnel. So YES holes have to be drilled in your trans tunnel! NOTE that we have painted the holes we drilled..Just used paint we had..turned out to be HEMI orange! WIN! To stop rust from forming on the freshly drilled tunnel. Also note in the photo below, that there is a WHITE dot, that is the position the cable will enter, since the Hurst is a cable shifter and you will no longer need your stock linkages. (I have heard of some aftermarket shifters that use linkages too..But I really prefer cable)
We shimmed with washers to get the shifter bolted in upright. NOTE! It is still OK to have a slight lean towards the driver, it is super hard to get this bolted in completely upright without making specific shims that would follow the trans tunnel curve and ALSO provide a flat surface for the shifter base to sit on. We did NOT do this. Mine is nearly straight up 90 degrees, but leans ever so slightly towards me when I sit in the car (we got mine probably 1 or 2 degrees off of 90). We made sure it was NOT interfering with the console lid in any way. SO make sure you do to.
The photo below shows the console back over the shifter. In this photo you can see that we have already installed the cable. My bad, I did not take a photo of making the cable hole. But Hurst provides a large rubber grommet with a hole in the center where the cable guides through. We cut a hole (carefully) and then widened it out to the correct diameter by hand using a grinder bit on an air tool. WARNING! We did ALL of this with my trans in the car! The clearance is CLOSE! Please be careful doing this, or drilling holes etc. as hitting the trans is possible if you get too rambunctious!
In this photo you can see the part of the Hurst shifter that needs to be cut off and smoothed. You will see why immediately when you take the shifter out of the box. Normally this portion went totally straight and of course the console lid would strike it. So it has to go..If you do this conversion look at the Hurst shifter out of the box and compare it with my photos. I marked the area in the photo below.
Now the last useful photo below is of the piece bolted with speed nuts onto the underside of the console lid. The big thing to note is how much we cut away. Normally there is an angled BOX that is covering the PRND21 slot. It is the housing that the light BULB pushes into. You CANNOT retain that. We cut the entire box away with a cut wheel. Leaving only one side of that box. I suppose we could have removed all of it, but we matched the photos I had seen on the DodgeCharger forum.
The important part to note. There is another use for this piece when in factory original configuration. That is to hold the plastic strip that covers the shifter lever slot. The plastic normally has a hole in it the same as the shifter lever. It prevents you from seeing inside the console and I suppose stops things falling in there too, like dirt etc.
When comparing mine to your factory one you can see exactly how much we cut off. Including the curved tab that normally would support and guide the plastic slot cover. I am going to make something to block the shifter hole, but right now mine is open.
If you try and leave this curved tab on the underside piece, it will be hit by the shifter when the lever is shifted into the REVERSE and PARK positions. Since both of these positions on the Hurst shifter are only reached by lifting the lever UP and then push forward. It took us a while to see what was causing the binding and subsequent LIFTING of the console lid. We thought it was happening at the front (where the lever was then located in Reverse or Park positions. But in fact it was at the opposite end of where the shifter was located. Part of the ratchet mechanism rises at behind the lever forcing the console lid to rise. This would have been bad once we screwed the console lid back down. SO make sure to check all of this BEFORE you button everything up again.
Last part.
I did not take any photos of the underside. Hooking this up to the trans is straightforward and the Hurst kit contains the needed parts for Mopar and other makes too. Since this IS a cable setup, if you are running extractors be careful how you route the cable from the interior down through the trans tunnel and then to the cable linkage. I have HP manifolds so I have plenty of clearance. But you do hear stories of cables getting melted if positioned too close to extractors or other exhaust parts. Zip ties are your friends here, put everything out of the way and you will be all OK.
Hope this helps some of you thinking about this conversion.
I had seen this done a few years back online, some guy had done it to his car. I started hunting for that build topic and found it at DodgeCharger forum. The guy who posted it was 'Keepat', he is on here too so HI mate!
There were a few photos, not overly descriptive, but I PM'd Keepat and he told me he had sold the car a while back. But he was able to provide me enough clues from his memory of doing the job himself, so I really appreciated the pointers in the right direction.
OK, so the plan was to install the Hurst into the stock console position, retaining ALL the stock look, and the stock console shifter surrounds etc. Including having it still light up etc. Of course I knew that with the Hurst being a ratchet bang shifter, the PRND21 would no longer line up since the Hurst simply does not work that way. (it returns to a roughly mid position for those that have never used one) But I would then gain a drag racing sanctioned shifter and by default, a lockout on reverse! Pretty huge oversight from Mopar if you ask me. And a problem that all of the cars from this era had no matter what make. How no lockout on reverse was seen as a good thing is beyond me.
So last weekend we got this done. Me and Janne my mate, and the guy who helped me screw together my rebuilt 383 last winter, and owner of JM Garage here in Finland, rolled up our sleeves and went to work! (Note! He ONLY accepts work on US cars..no exceptions..Great guy!)
I am sorry I did not start taking photos earlier. I really should have, there is a CRITICAL photo missing. But I will try and explain.
This first photo shows the Hurst sitting in place, without my console in place. What is missing here? Anyone that has done this or who has worked on the factory shifter knows that there is an entire bracket missing now..This is the FACTORY bracket that the shifter needs in order to be installed in the car. This bracket is SPOT WELDED to the trans tunnel. We CUT mine off! (it is 100% necessary to remove it in order to do this conversion!) We cut it with a wheel at the forward welded portion, then tried our luck gently lifting the entire bracket up seeing if we could break away (neatly) the rear spot welds. We got lucky and the entire rear just came away..Must have been 2 very crap welds from the factory worker that day my car was made! The result was a bracket that is perfectly able to be welded back if I ever want to go back to 100% factory! If you try this conversion please take care with that bracket. I am not sure how easily they are available, but why ruin it if you don't need to.
The next part of the process is to make sure the Hurst is sitting straight up when it is bolted down. There is a base bracket the Hurst has that has holes in it, you use these to bolt the shifter down to the trans tunnel. So YES holes have to be drilled in your trans tunnel! NOTE that we have painted the holes we drilled..Just used paint we had..turned out to be HEMI orange! WIN! To stop rust from forming on the freshly drilled tunnel. Also note in the photo below, that there is a WHITE dot, that is the position the cable will enter, since the Hurst is a cable shifter and you will no longer need your stock linkages. (I have heard of some aftermarket shifters that use linkages too..But I really prefer cable)
We shimmed with washers to get the shifter bolted in upright. NOTE! It is still OK to have a slight lean towards the driver, it is super hard to get this bolted in completely upright without making specific shims that would follow the trans tunnel curve and ALSO provide a flat surface for the shifter base to sit on. We did NOT do this. Mine is nearly straight up 90 degrees, but leans ever so slightly towards me when I sit in the car (we got mine probably 1 or 2 degrees off of 90). We made sure it was NOT interfering with the console lid in any way. SO make sure you do to.
The photo below shows the console back over the shifter. In this photo you can see that we have already installed the cable. My bad, I did not take a photo of making the cable hole. But Hurst provides a large rubber grommet with a hole in the center where the cable guides through. We cut a hole (carefully) and then widened it out to the correct diameter by hand using a grinder bit on an air tool. WARNING! We did ALL of this with my trans in the car! The clearance is CLOSE! Please be careful doing this, or drilling holes etc. as hitting the trans is possible if you get too rambunctious!
In this photo you can see the part of the Hurst shifter that needs to be cut off and smoothed. You will see why immediately when you take the shifter out of the box. Normally this portion went totally straight and of course the console lid would strike it. So it has to go..If you do this conversion look at the Hurst shifter out of the box and compare it with my photos. I marked the area in the photo below.
Now the last useful photo below is of the piece bolted with speed nuts onto the underside of the console lid. The big thing to note is how much we cut away. Normally there is an angled BOX that is covering the PRND21 slot. It is the housing that the light BULB pushes into. You CANNOT retain that. We cut the entire box away with a cut wheel. Leaving only one side of that box. I suppose we could have removed all of it, but we matched the photos I had seen on the DodgeCharger forum.
The important part to note. There is another use for this piece when in factory original configuration. That is to hold the plastic strip that covers the shifter lever slot. The plastic normally has a hole in it the same as the shifter lever. It prevents you from seeing inside the console and I suppose stops things falling in there too, like dirt etc.
When comparing mine to your factory one you can see exactly how much we cut off. Including the curved tab that normally would support and guide the plastic slot cover. I am going to make something to block the shifter hole, but right now mine is open.
If you try and leave this curved tab on the underside piece, it will be hit by the shifter when the lever is shifted into the REVERSE and PARK positions. Since both of these positions on the Hurst shifter are only reached by lifting the lever UP and then push forward. It took us a while to see what was causing the binding and subsequent LIFTING of the console lid. We thought it was happening at the front (where the lever was then located in Reverse or Park positions. But in fact it was at the opposite end of where the shifter was located. Part of the ratchet mechanism rises at behind the lever forcing the console lid to rise. This would have been bad once we screwed the console lid back down. SO make sure to check all of this BEFORE you button everything up again.
Last part.
I did not take any photos of the underside. Hooking this up to the trans is straightforward and the Hurst kit contains the needed parts for Mopar and other makes too. Since this IS a cable setup, if you are running extractors be careful how you route the cable from the interior down through the trans tunnel and then to the cable linkage. I have HP manifolds so I have plenty of clearance. But you do hear stories of cables getting melted if positioned too close to extractors or other exhaust parts. Zip ties are your friends here, put everything out of the way and you will be all OK.
Hope this helps some of you thinking about this conversion.
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