STEERING COLUMN SWAP PART 2- THE GEARSHIFT

[buckent]

Target vehicle is a 1980 chevy Malibu 4 door... the stereotypical 'old lady' car... 66K miles... no rust, 2 owner car...
ripped the 234 straight 6 and 3 speed auto out of it, and after a series of southern 'good as new' [coff!-BS-coff!} I was finally able to get the car to my brother in law, so he could drop in a 'slightly' massaged 355 with a custom bore hone, and cam.. hooked up to a 700R4 automatic..

the car hauls now... really runs well... my big problem since the engine swap has been the 3 speed column shifter with the 4 speed automatic.. I can hear you guys already... and no... a floor shift is not an option... not with this car... as I said, this is the typical old lady car... power steering, power brakes, and basic one speaker AM FM radio... nothing else... no other options... so, I want to stay as close to that bare bones stock look as possible, and a big ol trickshifter sticking out of the floor will kinda kill the street camouflage look I was going for.. the car is a four soor, and needs door panels too... but, I'll post that question in another column...

again.. I either need to mod this steering column to allow for an extra gear in the column shifter, or I need to find a very early column shift GM car with overdrive, and without a newer style 'smart' turn signal... any suggestions?

 

[Longroof79]

First off, welcome aboard. We'll need to see some pics of your ride, that's a prerequisite... :lol: only kidding of course. Sounds like a cool ride. I could understand you wanting to keep the sleeper look.

As for your column situation, G-body overdrive transmissions weren't available until the mid '80's...'84-'85 if I'm not mistaken.
The later columns also had the wiper switch on the stalk, and no longer on the dash.
There's probably a modification that can be done to the earlier column, but I'm not aware of it.