[DanEC]

Aside from my dumb comment on "unmolested' shift rods I finally figured out that although this is a Hurst Shifter that normally is installed with the reverse transmission lever extending up - these rods were fabricated/modified/whatever, for the reverse arm to extend down. That way the action to shift into reverse is the same as depicted on a stock Ford shift knob for a stock Ford shifter. Pretty sneaky.

Also, after thumbing through my ERA manual (Bob has reminded me several times that I need to read the manual) I found that most of the time the stock Hurst shift rods have to be modified for the car in order to mount the shifter in the postion ERA recommends. So. . . considering the quality of the work/welds on the shift rod modifications I'm now suspecting they were probably done in-house by ERA. I know the shifter/linkage came off of another ERA car. It's mounted and all is now well.

Thanks