Sure Stop Disc brakes with Left-side Rux shifter

[Dave Young]

How are you guys overcoming the left-side Ruckstell shifter shaft interference with the master cylinder? I’m chewing on it right now and am considering mounting a second parking brake lever behind the original one to weld the Rux quadrant to, upright, rather than downward. Any possible solutions would be appreciated. Thanks.

[speedytinc]

My standard Rux shifter trick is to mount a second parking brake unit behind the original. Let the pillow blocks touch.
Remove the tin lever, fill the pivot holes, remove the cam & reshape the handle a bit. Weld a lever arm up just right of the drive shaft.
Looks real period.
I dont know if this will clear your master cylinder. Looks like it would. I dont run disks.

[Dave Young]

That’s pretty much what I was picturing. The pillow blocks touching each other and clock the “U” bend just so.

[vech]

Here is an idea for you. This is what I did.

In our 1922 coupe, I removed the arm on the shift shaft, that pushed/pulled the rod to the ruckstell and moved it further over toward the passenger side. I also lengthened the arm, to get better alignment of the activating rod to the the final drive, and lessen the throw of the hand shift lever. You can see the master cylinder does not interfere with any of this. The hose from the master cylinder passes between the petals, and up to the reservoir mounted on the engine side of the firewall. Yes, I added a spring to the side of the master cylinder to the reverse petal, to insure that it stayed back all the way. You can also see that I added an additional ground strap from the frame to the mounting plate of the master cylinder, to insure that I had a good ground on the engine for the starter, since the engine is not bolted down to the frame solidly. A poor ground is not good for the 12 volt starter geared starter needless to say.

In the second photo , you can see that I also moved the hand shift lever over to the very end on the shaft, and bolted the pillow blocks down on the frame in a position that made the shaft dead over the pivot point of the emergency brake lever. I made the hand shift lever from scratch using a 1/2 in diameter steel round stock, that I bent a dog leg in, using an acetylene torch, so the upper part of the shift lever would not interfere with the use of the emergency brake (so my left hand would not hit the ruckstell shift lever when using the emergency brake.)

ruckshift.JPG (46.58 KiB) Viewed 1035 times

In an effort to reduce the "wind" coming through the hole in the floorboard, I made a plate out of thin sheet metal, with a central hole for the hand shift shaft to pass through, and two slots in each end of the plate. I put a little grease on the underside of the plate, and used flanged sheet metal screws, very lightly screwed into the floorboard, to allow the plate to slide back and forth when the shifter was used. It worked well! It does not interfere with the shifting action, and is easily removed when you need to pull the floor board out. If you are wondering why I have gasket paper on the floor board, it is because I use a brush type floor sweeper for a household door, cut to fit each side, and I did the same thing on all the pedals on the floor. the ends of the brushes touch each other, from each side of each slot, and the pedals slide down through the floor sweeps, when used, and the opening closes up as the pedal is moved. This tremendously cuts down the hot air leaking through the floor boards.

[Dave Young]

Craig, your post is exactly what I needed. The pictures show the location of the shaft and I understand the benefits of modifying the shifter the way you did. On my other car, the shaft is located aft of where you put it and would lie directly over the master cylinder. I’m liking how you did it. Thanks!