| Center Console & Floor Shifter | ||||||
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| Installation Started | ||||||
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I put a seat in and started looking for the most comfortable location for the handle. Once located, I welded the plates in spot. Then painted the spots to stop it from rusting. I then ran a few wires so the BTSI (brake transmission shift interlock) solenoid that way the BSTI on this shifter would work and then I found the lighting circuit so the shift indicator would turn on with the lights. | ||||||
| Cable Routing | ||||||
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Locating a hole to put the cable through was very easy. I am not the first to attempt this thus I just copied what someone else had already done. I made a template see above. I test fitted the seal and everything look good. I moved the template to the floor and cut my hole! All that's left to do is make the connection to the transmission. Once I was under the car, a new problem presented itself. I was not able to squeeze the fat end of the cable between the transmission cross member and the floor pan. It tried different ways but it just wasn't going. I had to pull the complete cable back out and run the thin end (which plugs into the shifter) between the cross member and floor, connected one end to the transmission and feed the remainder through the hole in the floor to route up to the floor shifter. | ||||||
| New Steering Column Bowl & Ignition Housing | ||||||
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YES... Instead of cutting off the shift lever I decided to go ahead and have the Roadmaster steering column (from the donor car) freshened up and replaced the shift level bowl with that of one from a 1996 Impala SS since they didn't have a shifter on the column. The second benefit of this is that it will give me a separate ignition key for the car. Less chance of someone steeling the car since 9C1 only came with one key for everything. | ||||||
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| Boy was this more difficult then I had imagined. I'm glad
I had a donor car. I was able to play with the Roadmaster steering
column instead of downing my Caprice. A positive side effect of using
the Roadmaster steering column, will be that I will have a separate ignition
key instead of have one key for both the doors and ignition (9C1 option).
The 1996 bowl is nothing like the 1994. We ordered some parts that we
didn't need. I ended up only using the 1996 bowl, but some modification
was required. I unfortunately didn't take any pictures of the
modification but the this bowl is plastic and a drimel goes along ways in
removal of plastic. The original lower steering column was not removed
this was the park/neutral safety switch (which also houses the reverse lights)
with still continue to work! Once the trimming was completed the ignition rod & dimmer rod worked perfectly. Everything else fell into place and looks AWESOME! All that's left is to remove the old and install the new. Oh yea. Need to connect the new shift cable to the transmission selector under the car before too long.... | ||||||
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Center Console Fitting & Installation |
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Once we fitted the carpet is was time to see how the center console was going to fit. I had test fitted it a couple times before the carpet was installed to find the correct mounting location. There are some areas I feel will need a little more padding to make the carpet fit to the console best, but for the most part I am very happy with the over all fit & function of the center console. | ||||||
| Floor Shifter Center Console DONE! | ||||||
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| Caprice SS Main Menu | ||||||
