Bear with me friends,
I just bought my first old truck, a 1966 F100, original 352 (rebuilt and running strong), original 3 speed trans with shifter moved to floor by PO. PO said shifter arm was cheap generic autozone part and needed to be moved back and forth once or twice to get into second.
First drive yesterday and I had a real difficult time getting through the gears, pure luck when it did hook up. On the way home it got locked in 3rd, found the tabs at the base of the shifter weren't hooking into either of the slots in the linkage bars (forgive the terminology). Moved it by hand and got it back to square one. Buddy told me to first grease up the bars to make it easier for the shifter to slide in and out. Then look at tinkering with the lengths of the pushrods (again I apologize for the grossly mislabled parts) before looking into the transmission itself.
Now for the real point, does anyone have a basic series of troubleshooting steps for something like this? I'm prepared for the worst but would like to be sure before I start tearing in to stuff.
Thank you all for your helpful knowledge and patience. I'm just trying to keep this old baby on the road, she deserves it.