Jcade - when I bought my "other" truck from it's previous owner it had been changed from a column shift to an automatic using the the old existing column shift lever. The problem with that is there is no locking mechanism to keep the lever from jumping out of gear. As I drove the truck the lever would move due to vibration and shift from drive into D2...or....sometimes if I hit a bump it would jump down to D1 or reverse. Didn't take me too long to realize that was unsafe and needed to be changed.

When I rebuilt the truck I went to an IDIDIT column to solve the problem but I'm sure there are many other solutions that you can use instead. Hopefully some of our fellow Bolters will have a few. Good luck with your project.