Pinto Car Club of America

Ok guys, here goes. My daughter has a 1980 Shay Model A. It has a 1980 Pinto drivetrain - 2300 - 4 speed.
The shift handle being about 12 inches longer than a std. Pinto, still seemed to be VERY sloppy. I removed the shifter and found that it looked like someone had used another ball and welded it to the shifter. Seeing that I decided it would be better to get another Pinto shifter and not deal with what looked like a cobbed up "thing".
Found a shifter and proceeded to remove and replace. No such luck!!! The position of the ball on the stock shifter is at the end of the round area next to the "flatted" portion. The spacing of these two balls is very different. The stock ball being as described and the "Shay" ball about 1 1/2" higher on the shifter. The ball [on the Shay]must be there to engage the shiftrail. All other aspects of the shifters are the same including the screw on collar. I was under the impression that there was only one Pinto 4 speed. Any help would be appreciated.

It sounds to me like either someone changed the shifter on your car sometime in the past, or they did an entire transmission swap on the car (unlikely, as the shifter screws in).

If you can get a picture of what your shifter looks like, it would help a lot.

All I can say about how sloppy the shifter is, is the reverse protect mechanism is probably gone on it. The stock Pinto shifter has a ribbed rubber sleeve that goes from the bottom of the shifter (above the retaining screw ring) to just about an inch below the second half of the shaft (the black half). This rubber sleeve usually deteriorates, but when working acts as a spring. When the shifter is functioning properly, you should have to push down on the shifter in order to move it over to the reverse gear.

Well, someone answered! THANK YOU!! The shifter is back in the car, so a picture is not possible at this time.
As I stated in my post, the "only" difference between the two shifters is the location of the [half] ball on the shifter. The original Pinto shifter ball is located just above the fork that engages the shift rail, the Shay shifter ball is approximately 1 1/2" higher [up] the shifter. All other pieces are there, except 1 1/2" higher. All this means is that the shifter has to sit 1 1/2" deeper into the tailshaft than the Pinto shifter would allow. I repositioned the ball [tack welded to the shifter] and it works OK. Most of the slop is gone and can be shifted easily. Remember the Shay shifter is very long and "any" slop that you might feel in a Pinto is drastically magnified with the Shay.The reverse lockout aspect doesn't work, but that's alright for now. Probably a slight change in the ball position would fix the reverse lockout, but I thought I would try and find out if there were any different transmissions before spending more time on this.
Any info you could provide me would be most appreciated,
Rob