# Hurst his/hers not shifting into right gears



## 1967pontiac400 (Dec 10, 2020)

Hi guys, 

I have an issue right now with my hurst 3 speed where the gears are not working right. 

Park is fine, Reverse is fine and as far as I can tell 1 and 2 on the "his" side works well. 

However, drive does not work and I can't find neutral. I think the little lever on the side of the T400 was just not set right and I think I found the right place in the service manual to adjust this, but I'm not 100% sure I've found the right solution and wanted to check-in here too.

Thanks as always guys!

-Will


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## 1967pontiac400 (Dec 10, 2020)




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## 1967pontiac400 (Dec 10, 2020)

Update, it looks like I am unable to get to 1st. The gearing are all off by one click on the trans selector, so when the stick is on 1 on the console, the trans selector is only in 2nd. I also noticed that all the gears are off by 1 - meaning, reverse is in the consoles spot for neutral, neutral is in the consoles spot for drive, etc. so it makes sense why we can't get into 1st. However the only thing I can think is wrong is that I have a shifter cable for the wrong car? Has anyone run into this?


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## BLK69JUDGE (Jun 10, 2010)

I will JUMP in ....
fairly common problem
from past issues I have found ....
2 speed and 3 speed cables are different 
and there is a couple 3 speed cable lengths BETWEEN clips
SOME reproduction cable like to flex ,,,
SOME repro cables dont have enuf push pull distance
I have ran into this a few times...
too
you MUST have original pan bracket thats un modified or bent or redrilled 
and a correct shifter lever/arm ...
I have a couple original th/400 cables I can measure the push pull distance on them tomorrow
and see if it is the same as yours ...

can you post pictures of your pan bracket and cable lever bracket ?

Scott


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## Jerry H. (Mar 19, 2020)

Are you sure you've got a turbo 400 instead of an overdrive tranny?


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## 1967pontiac400 (Dec 10, 2020)

What's weird is that park seems to be in the right spot but then it pulls too far to get to reverse. 

I confirmed with the serial number that I have a turbo 400, but it's a 68, not a 67. I don't think that should be an issue but I do suspect that the bracket is incorect for a 67, so that's on order along with a new cable from ames just to be sure.

I'll grab some pictures tomorrow and post them here, I followed the service manual the measure the right distance from the bracket but that did not do the trick.


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## BearGFR (Aug 25, 2008)

1967pontiac400 said:


> What's weird is that park seems to be in the right spot but then it pulls too far to get to reverse.
> 
> I confirmed with the serial number that I have a turbo 400, but it's a 68, not a 67. I don't think that should be an issue but I do suspect that the bracket is incorect for a 67, so that's on order along with a new cable from ames just to be sure.
> 
> I'll grab some pictures tomorrow and post them here, I followed the service manual the measure the right distance from the bracket but that did not do the trick.


Time to drop back and think things over a little bit. 

The arm on the transmission itself is "sequential" from front to back, the detents are P R N D S L. The angular distance (how far the shaft has to rotate) between each stop is 'fixed' by the guts of the transmission and can't be adjusted/changed. The arm on the end of that shaft is where the shifter cable attaches. That arm 'translates' a linear movement at the end of the shifter cable in to a rotational movement that rotates the shaft. Because 'geometry', the distance between the cable attachment point and the rotational axis/centerline of the shifter shaft has an effect on how much rotation happens for a given linear movement of the cable. The farther the cable is from the shaft centerline, the less rotation will be produced by a certain amount of cable movement. You've got the same thing happening at the shifter inside the car, only it's reversed. The farther the cable attachment point is from the pivot point of the shifter lever, the MORE linear cable movement there will be for a given amount of lever movement. 

You said in your last post that park was "right" but it pulled too far to get reverse. There are several possibilities here:

Since Park is at the end of the range and the shift arm at the transmission can't be moved past it, perhaps the adjustment for Park isn't actually correct. What might be happening is that when you shift into Park, it's actually trying to move the shift arm at the transmission PAST Park -- but since that can't happen, what will happen instead is that the shifter cable itself will be forced into somewhat of a 'bow' deflection because it's trying to force the two ends closer together, but the cable inside the sheath can't be moved any more. Just like when you hold a piece of thin wire stretched between your two hands, if you then move your hands closer together, the wire 'has no choice' but to bow. A similar result happens if there's binding somewhere in the system that's causing it to become "easier" to flex the cable than it is to move it. This can happen if there are places in the cable between the shifter and the transmission where the cable path isn't relatively straight and already has been forced into a significant bend (like if the cable itself is too long), or if there's binding in the cable. I've seen this happen when the ground connection between the engine and the rest of the body is 'bad', forcing the engine to ground through the shifter cable. The current flow will heat up the cable enough to melt the outer sheath onto the inner cable, binding it up.

Another possibility is that the cable mount points at the ends of the cable are 'off'. Either the cable at the shifter end is 'too far' from the shift lever pivot point, or the cable end at the transmission is 'too close' to the axis of the shift lever at the transmission. Either one of those (or both) will cause too much rotational movement at the transmission for a given amount of shift lever movement. 

So, what to do? The transmission end attachment point should be a bolt in a slot on the shift arm that can be loosened so that the bolt can slide back and forth without having to disconnect the cable pin. Put the shifter in neutral, then from under the car make sure the transmission is also in neutral. Take the nut all the way off the bolt so you can slide it out of the slot if you need to, then using your hand push the trans up unto Park, then count detents back until you're sure it's 'centered' in neutral. Double check both to make sure nothing moved, neither the shifter nor the transmission arm. Reinsert and tighten up the bolt being very careful to not allow anything to move.

If that doesn't solve your problem, have a buddy shift from neutral up into Park while you watch the cable from underneath to see if there's any flexing/bowing going on anywhere in the cable. Work it through all the ranges while you watch.

Something else you could do would be to disconnect the cable at both ends then move it by hand. It should be almost effortless over its full travel. If you feel binding anywhere, that could be your problem. The factory cables are no longer available except from third parties like on Ebay, but the prices will curl your hair. Nearly all of the repop cables I've tried are crap. The one I have in y '69 now is from Shiftworks, and it seems to be a good one. 

Bear


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## 1967pontiac400 (Dec 10, 2020)

Thanks for the thoughts bear, this all makes good sense. 

With your feedback, I went ahead and tried to re-set the action starting in 1st rather than park, here's the procedure I underwent and what I noticed. 

1. Disconnected cable at transmission selector switch under the car
2. Moved shifter selector on hurst to 1st
3. Manually actuated the transmission selector to 1st gear and loosened the adjustment nut
4. Attached the cable to the pin
5. With cable attached at both ends, I moved the transmission shifter back to park and thought I finally had it!
6. Moved the transmission shifter down to 1st again and realized I was not getting a click into the gear
7. repeated steps 1-3 above and before I went to re-attach the cable I noticed that it really did not line-up correctly

Per step 7, I realize that I can gently nudge/force the cable onto the pin when they're both in the 1st gear position but the pin and the hole at the end of the cable at the transmission do not align....it's off by about 1/3-1/2cm. So here are my thoughts on what's wrong now:

1. The bracket is bent - ordered a new one
2. I have the wrong cable (it's a NOS cable so I suspect it's not the issue, but you never know, ordered one from ames
3. There's a retainer clip...should that be installed on the inside of the bracket (front most on the vehicle) or outside the bracket (further back on the vehicle)? It only seems to want to go in on the outside/front of the bracket, but that adds distance betwen the pin and the pin hole on the selector switch (the cable comes too far forward).

Thanks guys, I think I'm getting close.


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## BearGFR (Aug 25, 2008)

Trying to do the adjustment in 1st is the wrong way to do it. Do it in neutral. It matters. 

Bear


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## 1967pontiac400 (Dec 10, 2020)

Fair enough, I'll try re-setting it in neutral tomorrow.


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## BearGFR (Aug 25, 2008)

1967pontiac400 said:


> Fair enough, I'll try re-setting it in neutral tomorrow.


Don't be afraid to loosen the nut on the transmission end so that it can slide in the slot. It's important that when you make the adjustment for there to be zero tension on the cable, and for both the shift lever and the trans to be perfectly centered in neutral before you re-tighten the nut. Another reason for adjusting in neutral that it it's very close to "half way" through the full range of travel. The idea is that if you get it "perfect" in neutral, that will minimize the any misalignment in the system that tends to cause it to be "off". If you adjust in either Park or Low, at either end of the range, that will maximize those effects at "the other end" of the range. I'm not promising this will fix your problem because you might still have some of the other issues I wrote about. However it's worth trying this first so that you can eliminate adjustment as a possible cause.

Bear


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## 1967pontiac400 (Dec 10, 2020)

Thanks, Bear. I'll give this a shot tonight 🤞. If no luck I'll be interested to see if the bracket that I ordered is different than the one on the car right now. That could make a big difference!


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## 1967pontiac400 (Dec 10, 2020)

Welp, we have an issue. You can see that if the transmission is in "N" and the selector is also in "N", the alignment is not right. Even with the pin nut loosened so it can move freely, the furthest forward pin position is still too close to the cable and I would have to force the cable onto the pin. 

I did observe one potentially weird thing that might help with the mystery here. When shifting from P to R, there are two clicks from the trans selector, but the 1st click is really only like a half click and it wants to fall onto the second "click". I can confirm with the car running the first click here does nothing, that second click is needed for R. I never thought anything of it since after those two clicks to get from P to R, there are still enough clicks to get the selector to N, D, 2 and 1.

Should I just bend the bracket to get this into alignment? Per the second picture, can someone please confirm for me that I have the shifter selector properly in "N"?

Thanks a bunch!


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## 1967pontiac400 (Dec 10, 2020)

I was able to finally get it into place in neutral but then park would not properly latch, something's off.


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## coyote595 (Dec 4, 2019)

Did you ever get this resolved? I am using a Shiftworks cable, and it is really nice, with adjustable bulkheads at both the shifter end and the transmission end of the cable. With this, you can easily tune in the cable position if you are having problems. It came in handy for me, as my shifting set up is a hodge podge of parts. I used a 67 GTO dual gate shifter, 69 turbo 350 trans, shifter cable bracket and lever on trans from a 75 Firebird turbo 350. My car was originally a 69 column shift car.


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## 1967pontiac400 (Dec 10, 2020)

I did not and I think I finally figured out why. 

I have a 67 GTO with everything internal being correct for the year (i.e. 67 his/her shifter assembly). However, the trans is a 68 turbo 400 and it appears that there is a difference between the 68 and 67 shifter assemblies so I'm trying to figure out next if there's a way to modify my 67 shifter assembly to be able to perperly acuate all of the gears correctly on the 68 transmission. 

Any help would be a life saver!!!!!! All I can tell at this point is that I might need to buy a 68 his/hers shifter assembly to replace my 67 version as they're different.


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## redhotgto66 (Sep 11, 2021)

funny im having the exact same problem with my 65 gto, it has a his/hers shifter and a turbo 400, no ideas what years but will be watching this for answers,thanks


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## 1967pontiac400 (Dec 10, 2020)

I *FINALLY* solved this. 

So after installing and adjusting 3 different NOS shift cables, I decided to try a cable from shiftworks, heard good things. 

They recommended a 32" instead of a 30" (which is the stock length). What was nice is there is a bunch of adjust-ability with the shiftworks cable, there are these end caps where the cable mounts into the shifter assembly and on the transmission bracket that gives a ton of fine tuning. Long story short, I installed their cable and was finally able to get into PRND21 for the fist time!!


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## 1967pontiac400 (Dec 10, 2020)

coyote595 said:


> Did you ever get this resolved? I am using a Shiftworks cable, and it is really nice, with adjustable bulkheads at both the shifter end and the transmission end of the cable. With this, you can easily tune in the cable position if you are having problems. It came in handy for me, as my shifting set up is a hodge podge of parts. I used a 67 GTO dual gate shifter, 69 turbo 350 trans, shifter cable bracket and lever on trans from a 75 Firebird turbo 350. My car was originally a 69 column shift car.


Great advice, this was the solution =-)


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## redhotgto66 (Sep 11, 2021)

i ended up making a new lever on the tranny that was shorter then the original one, it works perfect now was very easy


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