The donor chassis did not come with a gear link rod, so we have had to source one from somewhere else. There seemed to be a complete lack of available stock for a ’70 Beetle, but we thought that we tracked one down from Galway, Ireland. The item was relatively cheap (€25), but double that when you include shipping. However, when it arrived, it was about 4cm too short, which we have since discovered is for a later ’71 onwards model.
Anyway, we tracked another one down in Germany, which for €13 we thought was worth the risk. This has just arrived and fitted like a glove with the new urethane gear shifter coupling. Please note that this has not been fully tightened yet, as this needs to be removed to shorten the chassis at a later date.
The chassis also come without a gear shifter, so we have picked a nice looking one from Vintage Speed, which looks pretty similar to original 356 shifters. We will change the level knob at some point for an ‘ivory’ one that matches the 356 switches etc. and a nice leather boot to match the rest of the interior.
All gears are now ‘selectable’, but there is quite a bit of play in the shifter / rod, so will investigate that at some point.
One final point to note is that whilst we are building an Electric Vehicle (EV) 356 Speedster, we are going to keep the gearbox. This means less ‘engineering’ changes to the overall setup, with the AC motor bolting onto the back of the gearbox, in place of the original engine.