Topic

I have fitted Mike Saturs bell crank and now the short cable under the gearbox is too long. I initially thought that the ball joint had come off the gear-lever but it’s still firmly attached. The bell crank is fitted the correct way around. The engine and gearbox have been out so the locating bracket has been removed and replaced, there doesn’t seem to another position for it. Can anyone suggest what the problem is from the attached photos

Do these pictures help. I think that 3rd gear is selected.

I have often looked at these & wondered what the scale of improvement was. Obviously MGB381 can’t report back as yet but what have other changers over found?

I will go over tonight after work and have another look ( the TF is stored fifteen miles from my home) the answer must be simple and I just cannot see it.
As for whether it’s a worthwhile improvement then that is debatable. I suspect new standard ball joints would be almost as good. As I have been trying to figure out the solution to my problem I looked at the gear-lever and there’s a tiny bit of wear in those ball joints as well. There’s a greater amount of wear in the nylon bushes that the gear lever mechanism rotates. A little bit here and a little bit there adds up to quite a lot in total.

Looking at the pictures in the first message, it looks like the shift rod is pushed all the way in as if 2nd or 4th gear is selected.
Try pulling it out into the neutral or 1st/4th gear position.

Although this mod made a big improvement to the shift on my LE500, that was because my original joints were prematurely very worn (probably sub-standard parts fitted like a lot of the parts on the LE500).
The standard parts have some bonded rubber which helps to cushion the shifts, whereas these ones produce harder notchy shifts.

Okay, the new photos clearly show the selector shaft fully extended, The two black marks clearly show the position of the ball joint stud with the cable fully extended and fully retracted. Even with the shaft fully extended and the cable fully retracted the stud will not locate in either hole no matter how much I screw the ball joint on. Two more photos show the position of the bracket, I was hoping that someone would point out that it was mounted in the wrong position. Your bracket looks different to mine, one stud hole and to me it looks shorter.

In the morning I'll get some more photos of the whole assembly.

Your gearshift cable isn't properly mounted, there is no clip present.

Maybe the cable connector at the gearshift is minimally screwed onto the cable, making the cable very long. I'd suggest investigating the cable at the shifter and screw it on as much as possible. I had to do this to a friend's F just about a month ago because the cable connector at the bell crank wouldn't align. This happened to be on a standard factory setup.

Well spotted that man!

Yes I know the clip isn't fitted, come to that neither is the one on the other cable which is fitting perfectly, I am trying to sort out where the problem is before fitting them. I will be going over tomorrow evening and will have another good look, although its possible for the inner cable to rotate would it have turned that many times during an engine swap? I haven't disturbed the ball joints under the gear lever so haven't considered that as a possibility. I need to gain the distance from the back black line to one of the and I cannot understand how this situation has arisen. The subframe was removed complete with engine and gearbox, the engine was replaced, new clutch, and clutch arm fitted. The subframe was replaced and everything so far has lined up perfectly except this one cable. The inner cable moves easily and smoothly whether by pushing and pulling at the gearbox end or using the gear lever.

HelloHere's a few more pictures of my shift bracket and with the rod in a couple of positions. Not sure if it helps or not.

I just had a closer look at the pictures. If you compare the 5th picture from your first post with my last set of pictures, I think that your bracket is back to front.