Ruairidh
Originally I asked Bill Sheehan if there was a proven design for a remote gear shift for a sports Austin 7 using a late four speed gearbox, he supplied a drawing of one that had been printed in the Melbourne club magazine. This did not achieve a simple method of getting reverse gear and looked complicated to manufacture so I decided to attempt to build one myself and if successful I would let him Know. Attached you will find my design that does exactly what I wanted.
Bill asked me would it be ok to put this information on the Austin 7 Friends forum, But his attempts to forward the information on has not been successful so he asked me to email to you.
I regularly View the Friends site, have membership but am unable to access this site to forward info. On.
Attached pictures will explain the remote Shifter I built.
Could you let me know if this email is received in full with pictures.
Regards
Les Cridland.
Remote gear shift for Austin seven sports cars using four speed gear boxes.
Have made the connection between the two gear shifts With home made mini Austin 7 shock absorbers using half of a seven valve spring tightened to binding then loosened half a turn.
This does not cause any difficulty moving through the gears.
The only sloppiness in the system is what was in the original gear box.
The new gear stick has one inch and a half of spring loaded vertical travel. (more than is required).
Used a socket universal from a spanner set at the bottom of the new shifter.
To achieve reverse a second rod is fitted with a forked end to lift the old gear stick.
A steel peg with a small angle ground on (leaving a small flat on the left side) is fitted to the tunnel which just sits under the second rod when using third & top gear.
To get reverse just press the new gear stick down, when pressed the old stick lifts and moves to the right then drops off the peg then pull into reverse.
Had to halve the spring tension on the old spring in the old gear shift to reduce the force required to press down on the new stick.
The location of the centre peg has a large effect on the travel and load required to lift the old gear stick.
If this design was to be used on high usage vehicles it would need beefing up on the load areas.
As most sports cars are custom built the design would have to be customised to suit the vehicle.
Works great on our car but can not guarantee what is built by others.
As I have three vintage vehicles (two A7’s) the usage is low.
