Automatic Transmission with Retro Gear Shifter

Lokar’s Nostalgia shifter and floor-mount hand brake are sold separately. The shifter kit (shown) comes with everything needed to install onto the tranny—in this case a Chrysler TorqueFlite 727. The Nostalgia lever is 23 inches long. Standard single-bend floor shifters come in 23-, 16-, 12-, 10-, 8- and 6-inch lengths.

The Transmount hand brake bolts to the shifter bracketry. Lokar recommends using the 16-inch brake (shown) with 23-inch shifters. An 11-inch brake is also available. Transmount e-brake cables replace stock cables all the way back to the rear drums or discs.

Our ’42 Dodge military ambulance sports a built 360 V-8, a TorqueFlite 727 automatic, and big holes where the manual floor shifter, hand-brake, and transfer case levers used to be. Four-by fanatics can’t believe we’d convert the truck to 2WD, let alone slam it, but we think it’s a unique, head-turning idea.

Like many vintage trucks, the old Dodge’s tranny hump is removable, making bracket installation easy. If your rig’s hump isn’t removable, plan ahead and bolt up the shifter while the tranny is dropped or the body is off the frame.

The Lokar main bracket plate is 11-gauge steel. All the brackets and installation hardware are yellow-gold zinc-plated. Lokar’s illustrated instructions are easy to follow. The bracketry allows great flexibility in where you mount the shifter.

Mounting brackets vary with tranny make and model. For this Chrysler 727, Lokar bolts replaced two tranny-pan bolts. The new bolts do double-duty as pan bolts and studs to secure the passenger-side brace.

The driver-side brace bolts onto the 727’s kickdown band adjusting screw and locknut. Installation is easier with the throttle lever and shift control levers removed. Full Tilt’s Clay Mullis was careful not to change the kickdown adjustment by noting the screw’s position prior to loosening the locknut.

The trial-fitt indicated that the shifter needed to be mounted in the forward-most position in order to utilize the stock shifter hole. The Nostalgia shifter’s double-bend design kept dash-clearance concerns to a minimum.

The Lokar shifter assembly pivots in banana-shaped holes. This allows the stick to be tilted front-to-back to fine-tune knuckle-to-dash clearance and maximize the shift knob’s ergonomic position. Lokar builds in a neutral safety switch, but the 727 already has one, so we didn’t need Lokar’s in this case.

A slick Heim-joint-style shifter linkage setup assures bind-free operation. As seen from below the tranny, the bracket bolts to the driver-side front corner of the tranny oil pan.

Here’s the shifter linkage. The instructions make proper shift adjustment simple. The Lokar is designed to bolt to stock Chrysler components. If you’re swapping to an aftermarket shifter, double-check the stock levers are in place (arrow).

The 23-inch Nostalgia shifter puts the anodized aluminum knob at just the right height in our Dodge. The knob’s center is a Teflon-lined button that locks the shifter into Park and helps prevent accidental shifts in and out of Neutral. Knobs are available in brushed and high-tech tapered aluminum.

Almost too easy! The Lokar Nostalgia shifter fits perfectly through the old Dodge’s hump hole. The tranny hump is butchered, and we were prepared to modify it some more or scrap it in favor of a custom hump if necessary. First, let’s see how the hand brake fits.

The Transmount hand brake assembly bolts to the Nostalgia shifter’s bracket on the passenger side. Lokar also offers a range of floor-mount and underdash e-brakes, both hand- and foot-operated.

Lokar’s e-brake cables replace the originals from the brakes forward. In our full-floater Dana 60, that meant Full Tilt’s Mullis had to pull the rear axles and remove the brake drums, complete with wheel bearings, in order to reach and remove the stock e-brake cables inside.

Things were going too well. According to Lokar technicians, most brake backing plates are stamped so the e-brake cables bolt in at an angle. Lokar’s cables are made accordingly. But our Dodge Dana 60 relies on a rubber molded fitting on the cable to hold the proper angle. The backing-plate hole is not angled.

To solve the angle problem, Mullis fabricated simple brackets to hold the Lokar cables at the correct angle on the backing plates. Custom dust covers will be fabricated from heater hose sections.

After attaching the cables to the backing plates, Mullis routed them along the frame—away from exhaust heat and sharp edges—to the Lokar brake assembly. Then he slipped the inner cable out enough to cut the outer cable to length. The outer housing is Teflon-lined and is also available in braided stainless.

The outer cables fit into one-piece aluminum adjusters (lower center). Inner cables secure a double-locking cable block that’s also adjustable. The clever multi-adjustment rig allows extra flexibility in controlling the hand brake lever’s arc of travel inside the cab.

Here’s the finished Nostalgia shifter/Transmount hand brake assembly. Top-quality materials and well-designed functioning make it almost a shame to cover up this Lokar rig.

Incredibly, both the hand brake and the shifter fit perfectly in the old Dodge’s original holes, and we were able to adjust the brake so it works within the arc allowed by the hole. Lokar says we were just lucky; a ’42 Dodge ambulance wasn’t the basis for the design pattern.

Not that we’re ready for this yet, but when we finally buff the interior, we’ll use Lokar’s dust boots. They’re leather-finished Naugahyde with real sewn seams, gleaming billet boot rings, and stainless screws. Rubber bezels inside the boots prevent airflow through the floor hole. As with the shifter and e-brake, quality and attention to detail make Lokar’s retro-disguise a high-tech surprise.

The finished product.

Replacing your classic hauler’s manual gearbox with an automatic tranny is a popular and practical swap, especially when an engine upgrade is part of your buildup. When you make the slush box switch, you have a wide and varied choice of shifters to suit just about any interior look or driving style.

Lokar offers one of the trickest setups to grab auto-box gears right through the original floor-shifter’s hump hole. The Lokar rig is both practical and retro-cool. It’s practical because in many applications you don’t have to modify the tranny hump. You can vary the shifter position to match the hump hole. And the Nostalgia shifter is ultra-ool because it has the same double-bend most vintage trucks’ floor shifters had—only the Lokar stick comes in gleaming chrome. It’s definitely double-take time when somebody checks out your cab. Hey, I thought you said you had an automatic?!

The Nostalgia shifter is available for Ford, GM, and Chrysler (Dodge) automatics, and the basic installation procedure is similar. We also liked Lokar’s Transmount Emergency hand brake. Like the Nostalgia shifter, it has a vintage look finished in bright chrome that bolts right to the shifter’s mounting bracket.

We first saw the Lokar shifter/e-brake setup when we took our 360 V-8/TorqueFlite 727-equipped ’42 Dodge to Full Tilt Street Rods for a Wilwood hanging pedal installation (CCT, June 2000). We asked Clay Mullis to wrench the shifter and hand brake into place, too. As the following installation highlights show, the shifter is basically a bolt-on, and you might easily be able to do the work yourself, depending on your particular truck/tranny combo.