New Shift Knob for the 1966 Sport Fury

Yesterday I was helping my brother get his 1966 Barracuda Formula S (273, 4-speed - woohoo!) running after he'd done a lot of work to it. I noticed he made a shift knob from a red billiard ball for the factory Inland shifter in his car. He had several more billiard balls so he gave me one so I could make my own shift knob since I have an Inland shifter also.

The Inland shifter has a 7/8-inch diameter reverse lock-out T-handle sleeve that slides up into the shift knob when shifting into reverse, so my first operation on the lathe was to drill a 7/8-inch hole about 5/8-inch deep.

Yum...

Next was to drill a 1/2-inch hole for the oddball 9/16-18 thread pitch. I didn't have the appropriate tap so I had to then cut threads on the lathe. Fortunately it wasn't that difficult in this plastic ball.

Since I didn't want to remove the ball to test-fit on the shifter, I threaded a bar to 9/16-18 to use as a test fixture. It fits!

Here is the finished product. Ma Mopar put a steel insert into their original shift ball but I think the plastic threads should last well enough.

And here it is installed onto the shifter. I had to use a flash on my phone camera since it was rather dark in the car, so the photo isn't the best quality. Yep, that's a shift knob alright.