Will GM 200r4 work with factory floor shift location?
Here's the problem. The shifter torque shaft uses a pivot point ( bracket and plastic bushing under trans) that is basically below the transmission. From all the measurements that I've taken it looks like the rod will clear the 200R4 but there's no way the rod can go down as far as it does with the 904. From the top of both transmissions down to about 3 1/2 inches the body/housings are close to the same size so the rod will clear up to a point. But as you go lower on the 200R4 the housing gets pretty wide. So I'm pretty sure it can be done but it will require manufacturing a good attach point to reposition the bushing/bracket higher on the 200R4. There are two or three ways to do it, I'm trying to decide which is the best, easiest and most reliable. The torque shaft doesn't care where the pivot point is located a long as it is solidly mounted and vertical. Of course if you move the pivot point further up then you'll have to make a new bell crank arm (the arm at the bottom of the torque shaft). This is not a big deal but it will have to be welded to the torque shaft in such a way that it does hit the trans tunnel. This is a critical point because if the arm/weld fails then you can't shift.
On the bright side, as I was taking pics under the Cuda I noticed something very interesting. I attached more pics showing the rear view of the passenger side tunnel cross member. If you look closely you can clearly see a nice gap (1/16" to 3/16") between the upper cross member/brace and the body/tunnel. Looks like mopar only spot welded the brace to the body at the top of the tunnel and near the bottom where it starts to get horizontal. I'm sure other posters can verify this as many have cut this area out during modifications. You might say what difference does a gap make?? Well I worry about compromising the structural integrity of the upper cross member and body strength. Now that I know there's a nice gap between the cross member/brace and the body I can easily insert a 8 X 8 sheet of 1/8" sheet metal into this gap and weld it directly to the cross member/brace. The brace has a nice wide lip on each side as you can see in the pics. Installing this sheet metal and welding it in place should compensate, if not overcome, the weakness that will be created when I cut the brace like "Mopar to ya" shows in his great 200R4 update post. In fact I would make the sheet metal piece as wide as possible to give the brace as much support as possible. On a side note, I'm actually considering welding a piece of 1 X 1 angle iron to the front side of the sheet metal (in front of the trans brace) so that I can have a solid place to attach the torque shaft bushing/arm.
Enough for now....back to work!!
By the way, if somebody reads and has used the TCI small block adapter could you measure the thickness of the adapter. I believe it should be 1/4" but I need to know for sure. Thanks
Treblig