Reverse Gear Lockout

The 308 shift pattern is different than most 5 speed transmissions.  Most have the normal H pattern for first through fourth.  Then fifth is to the upper right with reverse below fifth.  The 308 has reverse on the upper left with first below on the lower left.  The rest of the pattern is the normal H corresponding to second through fifth gears.

Having reverse where first gear is on all of my other cars would be fine except that the lockout requiring you to push down on the gearshift lever was worn.  This allowed me to try and engage reverse when I absent mindedly forgot that first was in a different location.  No bad crunches, but I probably caused more wear on the reverse gear than all of the other miles driven on the car.

The lockout consists of two parts.  There is a bar welded on the left side of the lever that is just below the shift gate mounted on the console.  Then there is a bar on the left side of the reverse slot in the gate.  The two hit, requiring one to push down on the gearshift lever to allow the bars to pass each other.  The far side of the one on the gate is tapered so you can pull the lever out of reverse without having to push down.

I removed the gate and saw the worn bar.  I looked into just getting a new gate, but Ferrari UK wanted over £300 and I thought that I've got better uses for that amount of money.

So I took it back to my neighbor Mike and he used his MIG to add some metal in the worn area and I filed the excess back to the original shape.  The only issue was to make sure that the gate didn't heat up enough to warp it or damage the chrome.  To prevent that, I had the gate sitting on a wet cloth and immediately after each short MIG burst, dunked it in a bucket of water.  Here's the bar after everything was done.

I was also worried that the bar on the shift lever might need a touch up too, but just fixing the gate was enough to prevent the accidental engagement of reverse.

An interesting sidelight to the difference in shift patterns:
Lowell Brown and I were out in his 330 GT a year or so ago.  Lowell also has a 308 QV with the same shift pattern as my 308.  After Lowell had been driving in traffic for a while, I turned to him and said "Lowell, you know that you are in the 330."  He, being a physicist, thinks for a while and finally says that he knows that, but what am I talking about.  I replied that he had been starting the car in second gear every time, just as if he was using first in the 308.  The 330 V-12 engine has plenty of torque at low RPMs so the second gear starts weren't even noticeable.  So I'm not the only one with the gearshift patterns built into my hand rather than my brain.