308 shifter help please. Verell shift shaft bushing?

I'm almost finished with a mold to make a tool for this. Rick Moseley was nice enough to loan me one he carved out of a piece of tranny sump to use as a mold pattern.

 

Hello, My 308 gt4 1975 , I have to push down to get it in 1st and reverse. 2nd 3rd 4th 5th no problem , even down shifting from 5th is fine , but going back to 1st ,have to push down from any gear. Any possible solutions.

 

Michael,

You can alway take it apart and look at it the shifter unit is pretty easy to remove, after the seats and center console. I am not an expert but maybe it needs cleaning, allot of junk builds up inside there.
You need to put it in either neutral or one of the gears which I forget which you're supposed to do before you disconnect the shifter unit so that you can hook it back up correctly, the pictures it looks like I left it in neutral.

here is my notes from the time but no mention of what gear it was in when I unhooked it? 04-25-09 (50,978) I also removed the gear lever since I hope to never have to remove the console again, cleaned all the parts which showed little or no wear and put them all back together after lubricating it liberally with the Redline CV grease. This is later gear lever which is in the 79 parts book but not the 74 or 76. It has the spring for reverse inside the grease chamber under the ball, whereas the earlier models had the spring on top of the chamber under the shift gate. I used the press to push in the side spring and remove the spring clamp, putting it back the same way. Peter said not to remove the bottom plastic bushing as his broke. Mine looked fine but could not see how to lube it so I just put lots of the CV grease all inside the spring that rides above it hoping that it will work its way down into it.

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My GT4 (which I've had for a month) locked into 1st and refused to get out. Had it trucked to new Ferrari dealer in Nashville. They are disassembling the shift mechanisms in the gearbox and console and replacing all the bushings/bearings, adjusting and reassembling at some astronomical cost. The entire dealership and customers were salivating over the GT4 as most had never seen one.

 

John,

They're probably salivating at the income they'll be collecting from you for future repairs. Is this your first Ferrari? Do you have the garage space and tools to work on the car if you wanted to? I'm just curious I have two GT fours one for over 30 years and no one's touched the car besides me. There's not a Ferrari mechanic or dealer anywhere near me but unlike a lot of Ferrari owners I am not wealthy so I have to do all the work on my own but I enjoy it as much as driving the car. Would you post some pictures of the car for us? Having an old car like this I found there's always some thing that can or should be fixed. I would also be interested in what the dealership said was the cause of your problem?

Rob

 

John and Robert,
I had a bout of my '83 QV also being stuck in 1st, but it wasn't a shifter issue. I could row the shifter into any gear on the gate and was still stuck in 1st. Turned-out that one (or more?) of the selector forks had come loose from its shaft inside the gearbox. Mechanic said he'd never seen it happen before. Since the car was still relatively new to me at the time, I didn't mind paying for the repair and having the entire gearbox examined. Thank God it happened 2 blocks from the house and not somewhere on the 180-mile route we had mapped-out for the day.
Dave

 

I have actually seen this happen before, not just on a 308. Seems that some gearboxes the selector forks as well as the shifter pawl are just pinch bolted to the shafts. Some worn out bushings causing misalignment and too much force may move them out of position. The shifters are easy to service, but pressing bushings and doing internal gearbox repairs...might leave that to the professionals or well equipped. replacement gearboxes are not cheap or plentiful.

Rich

 

We have learned the way out of the Rabbit Hole of Ferrari desgn, with robertgarvins note on "three different shifters"..

To the OP your issues are the perished bushing shown on robert's photos. Indeed it looks like later units simply machine the hole tighter to the shaft size??

"One time" as all my tales start, ny shifter got really stiff and the Body Shop noticed it after extended storage.
The first fuel stop I topped up the engine oil 10W -50 and dumped the "last shot glass" worth into the slotted gate.

All was fine by the time I reached home and heat migrated thru the driveline.

As to the shifer forks, I have had one slip loose on it's own and it quite a disconcerting experience.
I left that to professionals.

One of my cars also had a foam block stuffed into the shifter, below the slotted plate.
I left it there, as I'm sure it "quieted things down".......but the intentional Ferrari shift effort is the stuff of Road Test legend!!

 

Michael,

Did you ever figure what was wrong? I'm still freaked out I did not screw up transmission levers when I took my gear lever assembly out! ha

 

Hey Robert

Hey Robert , I read that Big tex/Bubba put some oil down the shifter gate, I did the same thing and worked it in around pushed into reverse 12345 gears, That did the trick, it goes all gears easy. I did take the gate off first and vacuum it out.thankyou everybody for your knowledge.