408 Build Thread

...So I'm backing into a spot that my buddy saved for me and when I put the car into Park I could tell something wasn't right with the shifter. I was still in reverse. So I shut the engine off and put the parking brake on and got out like nothing was wrong (remember, people are still watching and staring). Turns out that the cable end had come loose from the shift lever at the transmission, right on top of my scorching hot header. At least it stayed together long enough for me to back into a spot.

I had another show to go to last Saturday, so I finally crawled underneath the Dart to reattach the shift cable. When I did, I saw that it was still attached?!?!? I followed the cable up and back and this is what I saw.
upload_2017-7-11_16-7-17.jpeg
Seems like the cable got too close to the TTI header and melted the outer casing and the cable just came apart after that. Long story short, I just so happened to have another brand new cable laying around so I spent the next three hours installing it. Man was I sore the next day. You never miss your friends like you do when you're laying underneath the car and you need someone to grab a wrench for you, or push the cable in a little further. I must have crawled out from under the car at least twenty times. I slipped some heat reflective tubing over the new cable and made sure that it wasn't anywhere near the header again.

I had been meaning to adjust the shifter because the 2-3 shift required that you hit the shifter twice for some reason? I read the instructions again and they said that the cable needs be installed with the trans and shifter in first gear. I'm pretty sure everything was in Park when we hooked it up. I'm hoping that's the problem. Of course, the hardware that holds the cable to the trans lever is long gone, probably somewhere on the road to the show. I'll have to try and find a more permanent way to connect the cable.

While I was under there I also noticed that the Lokar kickdown cable had quite a bit of slack in it, so when I got back up top, I re-adjusted the cable. That really helped with the shift points on the transmission. It stayed in each gear a little longer and when it did shift, it did it a little more firm than before. I think it was just shifting out so early before that it wasn't building up any line pressure.