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Focus Shift Tower Issues...

CSVT#49

CSVT#49

Addicted CEG'er
Joined
May 28, 2004
Messages
6,768
Location
Andover, MN
This is going to be long, but I want to be thorough.

Ok well I've been having a lot of problems shifting gears. I thought it was an issue with my cable end adjustment. I adjusted them and... well my shifting was OK. Then I started missing 3rd gear and occasionally 5th gear just as I had before. I was getting pissed. Well today I finally tore into it a little more. I took the boot off the shifter and looked at the ends. No issues. I looked at the cable ends... again no problems. I took off the dust cap for the Focus shift tower... still nothing out of the ordinary. I got in the car and started slamming the shifter around to see if I could get it to act up without the car running. Boom...

The shifter was STUCK in 5th gear. I was like WTF?!

Got out looked at the shift tower tried moving the hammer around for the forward and back motion and it moved back into neutral... checked the cable ends again still nothing that caught my eye. So I decided to see if I could get it stuck again. A few more shifts and.. yup stuck back in 5th.

Got out again and wal la.

The shift tower... when the hammer moves back and forth it pulls on a pin which rotates the tower. The pin also slides up and down in the slot on the tower to allow the shifting of the other cable which moves the tower up and down via the lever closest to the bell housing. Well... this pin I described looks like it sheared??? So when I shifted into 5th gear the now sheared (or so it looks) pin came out of the slot on the tower as it was lifted up from the other cable. This caused the tower to bind, preventing it from rotating back and also moving back down with the other cable.

Has anyone seen this before??? I'll post pics soon.
 
Is it just possibly that the shift cable end is adjusted to short; such that when I shift into 1st, 3rd and 5th the cable is pushing the tower up to high? Or does it look like the pin is sheared? To me looking at the scrap marks on the top of the pin looks like it sheared...

Picture when it was new:
tower28cq.jpg

towerextra4el.jpg


And now...
topviewne6.jpg


This one is a bit blurry, but it was dark and a close shot with a lot of flash
sideviewja5.jpg


Over all view, you can see that it is stuck in 5th gear
overallxg2.jpg
 
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Problem Solved

Problem Solved

Alright well I took out the tower and was inspecting it. I took the tower off the shaft and inspected the pin.

The pin did NOT shear.

The pictures below will show the detail.

When the tower was new...
towerextra4eltexthw4.jpg


As the tower was last night...
overalltextbr0.jpg


I think what happened was that the short shifter was putting extra tension on the tower when I was side shifting to 5th gear and reverse. This force pulled the tower up off of the shaft a little bit, which was enough to cause the pin for the up/down shift hammer to pop out of the slot.

I'm tempted to drill a hole through the tower and obtain a longer pin as to prevent the tower from sliding up further on the shaft again. I guess I'll tackle that if the tower comes up off the shaft again.

Looks like I saved myself $140 for another shift tower.
 
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Honestly I think Terry's pinned Contour tour is the way to go. Then you don't have mess with the different cable ends and the reverse light switch.
 
SVT SNOB said:
I have a spare FSVT Shift tower if you need that I will sell very cheap. Was only used for 2K Miles.

Aaron
Click to expand...

Thanks for the offer. I might take you up on it... not sure now though. My brother has a brand new MTX-75 trans for a 2.0L that has been sitting in his basement for a while. It has the same tower on it and he told me he would sell me the whole trans for $100. So I might just do that because then I could swap out all of the internals to my trans at some point. Only difference between the 2.0L and 2.5L MTX-75's is the bell housing from what I understand.

todras said:
Honestly I think Terry's pinned Contour tour is the way to go. Then you don't have mess with the different cable ends and the reverse light switch.
Click to expand...

Well when I bought the car it had a blown motor. So I reworked everything at that time, which included going to the Focus tower. So I already have the different cable ends and reverse light switch installed...
 
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what are the advantages from going to the stock shifter tower to the focus one in the pic?I wondering because my shifterbolt sheard off an i'm wondering what parts I can replace to make sure it doesn't happen again.I know terry haines maes the keyed shifter tower but was wondering other options.Sorry no trying to hijack your thread CSVT#49!
 
The Focus tower has a couple of issues I think. Not positive. The stock has one. The bolt shear issue.
 
Not sure...

However the Ford OEM Focus shift tower can be had for ~$138. Not sure what TH charges for his modified Contour shift tower.

I have had good luck with the Focus tower up until now. However I think the root cause behind it's failure was the short shifter install and the lack of my cable adjustments early on.
 
Owners may think the later Focus tower will cure gear loss...well it will not. Apart from being a later design it can still fail as can early towers with 'the bolt', This is why(refer to pic).

standard.jpg

The fork lever in the pic is the Focus type, the early one was one piece but the Focus is two parts spot welded together. One half takes the roll pin used in place of the bolt, the other is the lever that moves the forks.
It can fail in 2 ways 1)The roll pin can break as the bolt can..only good point is no bolt head to fall in the trans but you still loose gears 2)The spot welds let go (as was the case in a tower that came to me from SZ a couple of years ago) With the welds gone the lever will still not move the forks...again, loss of gears.

On the 'keyed mod' to the Focus tower this cannot happen as both halves of the lever are locked to the shaft....no loss of gears. On the exterior of the Focus tower the top part can rise if not correctly locked on shaft..our mod will also take care of this issue.

Later Focus tower also had a redesign with a quadrant weight so the top part cannot move. This late quad tower can only be used with a later cable bracket on the trans and Focus cables. Moral is a Focus tower can still fail...without being 'keyed'. Should also note that the material of the two parts of the Focus lever is sintered and very hard...does not take weld very well so the key is a 100% sure way of no gear loss.TH
 
/\ Sounds like a sales pitch. Who was the one that got us using the Focus tower to begin with, saying it was an upgrade :ponder:
 
.....and the 'Keyed Tower' mod was after this, when 'Focus' and 'Focus Style' towers also started to break roll pins and fork levers. Did I 'invent' using the 'Focus Tower' mod?? Wow...!!TH
 
So how many have actualy broke a Focus Tower. Its been a while but last I heard it was only one :ponder:
 
todras said:
.....and the 'Keyed Tower' mod was after this, when 'Focus' and 'Focus Style' towers also started to break roll pins and fork levers. Did I 'invent' using the 'Focus Tower' mod?? Wow...!!TH
Click to expand...

Todd I thought you were done regurgitating his words? If he really wants to let us know something why doesn't he come back and post it himself?

And for what its worth, I remember Terry suggesting everyone use the focus tower. Can I take a wild guess and assume the 'mods' to the focus tower cost more than the stock tower 'mods'?
 
And lets see some further details on this "mod". How much does this mod cost verse a new focus tower? Since alot of your customers are here, you can post here. Dont think this has been a issue for along time....
 
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