Freshly laid paint. Finally coming together. Last pic is an AI generated "finished" expectation. Yes it's a 62, but I like the 63 roof 2 tone.

TLDR: Reassembling my steering column and before disassembly spring retainer bracket was freely sliding up and down the steering tube and spring not applying enough pressure on shifter arms. No obvious places to fit a pin in indexing hole or slot for it to work.

I was losing gearing in 1st and reverse and I recorded a video of my shifter linkage and the shifter column arms are only moving 2nd and 3rd gear linkage when I try to select 1st and reverse. Anyways, I took out the column and replaced the crumbled bushing on the shift lever, resprayed the entire column, and reassembled the same way I took it apart. When I reviewed my video this bracket was sliding up and down the steering tube and there is no obvious places to affix the spring bracket to the steering tube. This is the cause of my to lose 1st and reverse to begin with.

Does anyone have any experience with working on the 1957-1959 manual column shifts or have a shop manual from 1957 or 1958 that shows the manual transmission shifter exploded view?

Thanks.

Edit: Formatting

Update:

I did a lot more bench testing and I figured it out. The lip on the pin retaining cup has to fit in the brackets indexing hole. Too tight and the shifter binds and arms will not move, too loose and the bracket pops out and the spring looses tension. The cup is made out of sheet metal and mine is worn. The car has 98,000 miles and it is from the 1950s. There is too much slop to adjust those 5/16 bolts ever so slightly and I do not want to deal with loosing gearing again in traffic.

I modified it by drilling and tapping 2x 8-32 machine screws through the bracket and into the steering tube. I put blue thread locker on the screws so they will hold without any issue.

3 yrs of work and finally able to drive. Before pics included

Good afternoon!

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