This device was in place for the first five years or so I was driving the Van...Shifting always worked well ( other thaan the occasional Linkage jam ).
Van then sat for a couple years with an Engine problem, ( I spent most of June working on it and it has been back in daily use now since mid-latter July )and out of the blue, would not shift any more, it was bound up somehow... so, I ended up looking to the Shift Box, which I knew nothing about and had never critically seen before.
So, it seems like the device was in there a long time, and had not interfered with the Shifting function, till finally, being broken up and so on, it did interfere.
Another odd thing, when I took the Shift Box apart, there were three pieces of Gravel in there in the old Grease...Gravel pieces were large, too, about 7/16ths in diameter. It might have been those Gravel pieces which cause the mediating Device to become broken up so bad.
How the Shift Box ever worked at all with that Gravel in there I have no idea.
"Patina" of old baked on Grease seepage and Road Dust, suggested no one had been in that Shift Box in a long long time.
Shift Box itself and it's normal innards, once clean, appeared to be about perfect, almost no wear of any kind, and no corrosion or problems.
It took me a little while to figure out that this Device was totally un-necessary.
Initially, I was vexed about where to find a replacement!
Last edited by Thriftmaster_Phi; 08/11/2014 9:57 PM.
might have been something that was only used on the step vans, or maybe a rare aftermarket device [from the van body mfgr?] that was an attempt to prevent the box mechanism from jamming the way they tend to do, looks like it would limit travel of the forks - did you investigate how it would affect movement when in place? ..... that shift box has the style arms used in 55-59 trucks, not the earlier years