The difference between B&M's...
The difference between B&M's Light Truck Megashifter and a standard Megashifter is this bracket in front, which is a varying-height lift for your shifter. The kit comes with brackets to adapt the shifter to a Chevy, Ford, or Dodge tranny, with other applications possible with a little ingenuity.
While an automatic transmission shifter on the column might be a little easier to access for Park and Drive, you have very little control when shifting through gears while in motion, and you could possibly land a gear you don't want, like Reverse at 55 mph. On top of that, the column shifter in our Dodge pops out of gear and into Neutral whenever we hit the ground-a condition we will remedy with a B&M Racing Light Truck Megashifter. The Mega-shifter is a cable-operated shifter that locks into each gear and won't shift without a ratcheting motion performed by the driver. It'll work with a number of three- and four-gear auto trannys, including ones with an electric "Overdrive Off" button like our Dodge 518 has. In just a couple of hours, we had our Dodge's shifting duties assigned to a floor shifter, where they're supposed to be.
 Check the height of the shifter...  Check the height of the shifter and make sure it is in a comfortable spot for you to reach. Once you have a good placement, drill four holes in the transmission tunnel (or wherever you mount your shifter), making sure you have enough clearance for the shifter cable and the plastic Megashifter housing. |  Once the shifter is mounted,...  Once the shifter is mounted, figure out what angle the shifter cable is coming down from and drill a hole through the floor. Make sure to leave enough clearance to get the bigger parts of the housing through. Seal the hole to keep dirt and fumes out of the cab. Where the cable end mounts to the shifter, you should be able to see the neutral-safety and reverse-light switches that are tripped when in the proper shift position. If your vehicle is getting signals from switches mounted directly to the tranny housing, you may disregard these two switches. |  Once you've mounted the shifter...  Once you've mounted the shifter run the shifter cable through the floor (keeping it away from exhaust pipes), you're in the final stretch with only the factory shifting linkage to disregard and the B&M cable brackets to mount. There is usually factory linkage coming down from around where the steering column comes through the firewall into the engine compartment. Remove all of this and try to get the factory tree shifter off the column without screwing up the steering column. If your truck has an "Overdrive" and an "Overdrive Off" button on the end of the factory shifter instead of the dash, consult your local dealer about how to rewire the few wires in the shifter to a switch you can mount on your dash. |