Will GM 200r4 work with factory floor shift location?

Today was very productive and I also found another small problem. If you've been reading all my posts from the beginning you remember I had to trim off a good sized piece of tranny housing on the passenger's side so the it wouldn't interfere with the down pipe on that side. Of course I had only estimated and by looking at and measuring my Barracuda I cut the amount I thought I needed to cut. As it turns out, now that the tranny is installed, I didn't cut enough. In the first pic I'll show what I cut off the first time(months ago). The second pic shows what I had to cut now that it's in the car so that the exhaust can go back in (remember I had to remove the passenger's side exhaust pipe to get the tranny in). After removing this last piece the exhaust went in with no problem.
Now on the driver's side, well that's another story.........I hooked up the exhaust no problem but then I couldn't get the new starter in. With 2 1/2" pipes there's not enough room, even for the small 97 Dakota starter!!! I'll probably put a good size dent in the pipe just to get the car going then order the elongated 2 1/2" (oblong) pipe to replace that section off pipe so I don't lose any power/flow.

Next I tackled the shifter linkage. It wasn't hard but it took some time. I had already drilled three holes in the new torque shaft lever because I wasn't sure exactly how much "throw" I needed to make the 2004R catch all the gears properly. I used the original Chevy trans selector lever and welded a heavy piece of metal (properly shaped) to the original lever so I could find the correct location for the hole. If you check out the pics you can see how I attached a piece of sheet metal (white piece of pointed metal in pic # 3) to the exhaust pipe and used the metal piece to locate the one hole in the lever. Then I shifted the console handle from "PARK" to "DRIVE" to see how much travel I got out of the first hole. I used this procedure for all the holes to get the amount of travel. After I knew how far each hole moved form "P" to "D" I wrote it down for reference. Then I went to the new trans selector lever (pic # 4 and 5). I used a magic marker to mark a spot on the new lever. Then I held a scale next to the lever to see how far that spot moved when I shifted the tranny from "P" to "D". The first and second spot I marked were close and the third spot was perfect. Using the third spot the trans selector lever moved exactly as far (from "P" to "D") as the third hole in the torque shaft lever. I removed the selector lever and drilled a hole in the correct spot then I hooked up the shifter and shifted from gear to gear and it worked perfectly. Lock in park, Neutral in Neutral, Drive in Drive!!!
Now I know some of you are probably saying," The console shifter only had three gears and the 2004R has 4 gears!!!" My answer would be, "YES". But in all the years I've been alive I've only had to use low gear (in an automatic) a handful of times. I can live without low gear for a few months because I don't plan on racing, well that's not completely true but...I don't plan on manually shifting gears. Later on I'll remove the console and cut another notch in the shifter mechanism. Yes, I've already checked mine out and there's plenty of room for another notch.

The last 4 or five pics show close ups of the two places that the housing hits on either side of the upper cross member. On the driver's side there's a silver arrow showing the place where you have to remove extra metal beyond what I removed this first time. On the Passenger's side you can see how I had to trim off that ear that sticks out on that side. Everything is clear now and the housing doesn't touch anywhere, I have at least 1/8" clearance everywhere.

Ran out of slots for pics so I'll post more later tonight. Got a ton of pics and although some people might say I'm posting too many pics I say...."I only wish "Mopar To Ya" had posted more pics from more angles. I'm not complaining but I was able to get the tranny installed pretty easily because of the pics Mopar To Ya posted, but more would have been better.
Thanks, MOPARTOYA!!!
LOTS MORE LATER TONIGHT!!!
treblig