No Shift! | First repair on the Powerstroke!

Last week I brought home the new tow rig, my 2000 F250 Powerstroke. I bought her on Tuesday, got my tags on Wednesday, and Friday night I had the first issue.

Me and some friends decided to go for a Sheetz run after working on some go kart modifications for a while, and since the truck is new (to me) and they hadn’t ridden in it yet, we took the truck. All was going well, even with all the cops out that night being the start of a holiday weekend. Until on the way home, we’re sitting at a stop light waiting to go. The light turns green. I go to put it into first. The shifter just kept going.

I put on my blinkers, and checked to see if I was actually in first or not. I was in neutral, so I turned on the cab lights to see what was going on. Now the shift boot was holding everything together, so I feared that it was something internal. After a messing with it the entire shifter arm fell right off! Moving the shift boot a bit I could see the base arm coming out of the transmission, and a small part of the shifter arm still there. Fortunately it was all slow roads in town, and I was able to get it into second gear and make it home.

It was already fairly late, so once I was home I just parked the truck. I went inside, ate my Sheetz, and went searching for a new shifter. I found one on eBay for about $63, so I ordered it. Unfortunately it is not due to arrive for about 2 weeks.

Now, I had plans to use the truck on Saturday, so first thing in the morning I went out to the garage and made myself a temporary shifter. I started by pushing the shift boot farther down so I could removed both bolts holding the remaining broken chunk. Once that was out I could see that it had been welded before, and not very well… (Though, to be fair, given how close to the mounting holes it snapped, it would be pretty hard to weld in general.)

Now that I can see I need something that mounts with two bolts, I found a chunk of black pipe, cut it to the approximate length I would want, and put it in the hydraulic press. I used the press to squish one end to be totally flat as evenly as possible, alternating sides so that the flat surface would be in line with the rest of the pipe. Once I had that flat I was able to drill two holes to bolt it to, clean up all the edges, and mount it to the truck. Now I have a black pipe shifter!

So the good news is, I was able to get the truck home, the repair only took about 15 minutes, and now I have a cool pipe shifter for the truck! The new factory shifter is still coming, so when it gets here I’ll have to decide which to install. I actually like this pipe shifter a lot!