1977 Mark V – Gearshift Hard To Change

Hi Bill –
Hope you can help please. I’m in Western Australia and have visited you guys at Lincoln Land in person 12 years ago (also meet Chris), and have bought a few parts from you for my Mark V over the years. I’ve owned my Mark now for 30 years and it was converted over to right hand drive when I imported the car originally into Australia. I don’t drive it very often, but its still drives very smoothly, starts up easily and still looks great. I’d love to send you a picture of it sometime. My problem over the years has been… when changing the gear change position lever on the steering column, its feels over tight. It drives and changes gears without any problems when driving the car normally, but I’m concerned about over forcing the gear stick changer. Is there a linkage cable to the automatic gear box that needs lubricating at times to keep it free? I had a friend tell me, it may require rubbers grommets on the control linkages near the gear box replacing. No sign of any oil leaks either from those areas. Any help would be very appreciated.
Best Regards,
Kevin
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Hello Kevin –
As I have no idea what was installed on your Mark to operate the transmission from the right hand side I can only suggest how to possibly eliminate the original steering column as a suspect. You should be able to do this by disconnecting the shift lever at the lower area of the column and then operate the shift lever to find out if a bind still exists in the column. If it still binds when disconnected then the inside of the column would need to be inspected and corrected as necessary. If the above is operating properly, the added on linkage may need to be inspected, lubricated or aligned properly. We do not see many right hand drive vehicles here at Lincoln Land but I would imagine also that there are many styles of rt. hand drive conversions. Please let us know what you or your mechanic do find as the culprit.
Sincerely,
Bill